Just half way finishing the book "Eleven", a collection of short stories by Patricia Highsmith, and I had already read two of the short stories are about snails killing people. I really didn't expect the book to be so creepy. I bought the book expecting they are love stories, because I had read one of her short stories a few years ago, so called "The Birds Poised to Fly".
It is about a guy named Don, proposed to a girl. He carefully wrote down his proposal in a letter and sent to her. The awaited reply from his love one is taking so long, and drives him crazy. Meanwhile, he stumbles upon a letter from another girl, expressing her love to his neighbour. Don has a strong sense of empathy to this girl, because his neighbour doesn't seem to bother to reply her. So Don reply her, in the name of his neighbour. While there is still no reply from his love, and after a few letters between Don and this mysterious girl, he asks the girl out in his neighbour's name. But in the end, the girl shows up as expected, but Don walks to her and says sorry to her and walks away, with a deep sense of guilt.
After reading a few more short stories in the book, I think this one fits just fine with her style. And like what the teaser at the back cover of the book says : "Unsuspecting victims are devoured by their own obsessions in this perfectly chilling collection".
Back to people killed by snails. The first one I read is called "The Snail-Watcher", a man devoted to his pet snails and drown by millions of his collection of snails in his room. And the second one, "The Quest for Blank Claveringi", a zoologist searching for a mythical giant snails on a remote island, he finds them but also eaten alive by them. Now I really want to ask Patricia whether she hates snails? And why snails, in these 2 short stories? Why not other creatures?
The idea of man-eating giant snails really haunts me. It reminds me of a scene in the movie "King Kong" (2005), when people are dropped into a deep pit filled with all kinds of super-sized insects (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTWYQhTT388). That scene is just so creepy to think about. I mean I would rather be ripped half by King Kong than eaten by these insects.
Luckily real life insects are relatively small in size. But why aren't there giant insects? In fact scientist still don't have a clear answer. This question is discussed more in details in a video from Scishow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l79FuGuk1qE). Apparently the percentage of oxygen in the oxygen is one of the factors affecting their size. Lower the percentage is, smaller their size is. So I guest we should be grateful that we had cut down so many trees to have the oxygen percentage lowered :P
Since snails are such a delicacy in France, I just hope that nobody is doing some genetic engineering on snails to make them bigger, juicier, and grow faster. I do enjoy snails as food, but I don't want to be their food. The following pictures of snails are just some random shots taken during a rainy summer evening, when the moisture so high that even snails came out on the paved roads and on the poles of bus stop.
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