Which I keep pouring into every square foot of ground, particularly the flower beds along our walk. Which brings me to the snail, the one my wife found high on a stairway railing. Such a brave little being, she said. Having climbed all that way, didn't he deserve to be taken downstairs and placed among the winter pansies?
Jane is a fellow liberal, eminently green and ecological. Still, we do clash. I pointed out that snails are an invasive species. So are you, she replied.
Which left me rather speechless. I have, more than once, given Jane my lecture on non-native species. She is singularly unimpressed. Devonshire, her place of birth, hasn't seen a native species in centuries.
Britons view nature differently. Long before Columbus stumbled on this hemisphere, most of England was no longer wild. Sherwood Forest in the era of Robin Hood did not have a single tree that wasn't pollarded, coppiced or otherwise trimmed. Pioneers in woodland management, the Brits were. And remember, Robin's Merry Band wore green. Okay, Lincoln green.
I have even tried to play the French card. California's snails, I pointed out, hail from a mass breakout at a 19th century escargot farm in the San Joaquin Valley. My wife was not swayed.
Maybe I will have the last laugh, having dumped copious amounts of snail bait all around the garden. Problem is, the stuff is green. It doesn't kill snails, so much as deter them. In any case, it is having no discernible effect. The snails, I am convinced, have a good laugh at their weekly staff meeting.
Still, I insist on being green. Looking at the flower beds up the street makes me green with envy.
