Escapee
Back in June or July, we became the owners of a fishtank and four goldfish, and have since enjoyed having these pets (or pieces of furniture? I can’t decide) swimming around in our lounge room. But something had always been missing. Goldfish are fine, but they’re so everyday, so bourgeois. So I went to the aquarium shop and returned with a new resident for our tank.
So named because she is an apple snail, Granny Smith has enlivened our tank by scooting around and scavenging on the leftover food and er, goldfish byproducts which litter the gravel. Her hobbies appear to include climbing to the top of the tank and base-jumping back to the ground, eating lettuce, hiding in logs, and getting stuck behind pipes and hoses. We also learnt that she is at least semi-amphibious, as she climbed out of the tank while we were at church and we found her on the carpet when we got home. Fortunately, she survived long enough for us to drop her back in the water.
We initially thought of Granny as elderly, but she surprised us by laying a clutch of eggs just above the waterline. We are waiting to see if they hatch – not sure what we’ll do with all those little snail-lets, especially as each clutch contains between one to three hundred eggs. If you are into escargot, please contact us.