At some point I was in a street in London, leaving a venue, with a large plastic lid, on top of which was a bunch of snails whose shells had been removed.
They were still alive though – and singularly and collectively – in a state of trauma. I had to get somewhere, I regretted that the shells had been removed, I regretted that they had been left in this state – and wished that I or whoever had done this had thought it through a bit.
I also regretted that I was going to have to kill them or abandon them – because I needed to get somewhere – and they would slowly die or be eaten by something – or they would not only have to contend with dying with their shell removed – but they would have to contend with trying to make sense of all that whilst also being shoved on to the side of a pavement in London – which is not at all the natural habitat of a snail – with the bits of a detritus commonly found in the corners of the streets of London, such as cigarette buts and bits of paper.
Surely they would not know how to deal with so many multiple sources of stress – that their shell had been removed – or that they were having to contend with these inconvenient street artefacts.
So, in the end, I decided I would have to stay and take care of these snails on my plastic lid – and that I couldn’t just rush off and abandon them.
So I realised and decided that each one needed a bit of water – so I poured water over these morose and very slow creatures – and all of a sudden they piped up and squirmed – as if they had been rejuvenated.
And I thought, if I can look after them and protect them, over time they will grow back their shells.
But could I protect them, I thought, from all the things that will surely want to eat them and take advantage of their soft fleshy back?