When Snails Fly

It is becoming something of an established fact in our tiny school that Mrs. Dahl likes to keep a critter or two in her classroom.  My incoming students were so jazzed about life in the Magic Tree House that some began gathering gifts for me before school had even begun. 

One precious lass pulled a dead Monarch out of the grill of the family car and carefully stored it away for the onset of school.  Another captured snails on vacation and lugged them home for sharing with her classmates.  These she triumphantly presented to me on the day BEFORE school began.  Her ear-to-ear grin was priceless as she set a watery habitat on my Discovery table.  “Do you know how to care for snails?” I asked inquisitively.  “No,” was her unembellished response.  I didn’t either.  But she hadn’t killed them yet (obviously) so I figured I couldn’t do much worse.

I did notice that they were a bit… odiferous.  Downright stinky, actually.  I have an acute sense of smell.  It’s something of a superpower, really.  I can catch a whiff of sweaty gym socks from five hundred yards - cigarette smoke from the open window of a car half a mile ahead - garlic breath from across the teacher’s lounge.  It’s a gift, and a curse. 

I was a little concerned about my new students walking into something akin to a Louisiana swamp on their first day of first grade, but that angelic grin was killin’ me.  I didn’t have the heart to refuse her obvious joy, so I thanked her profusely, promised to care for them as best I could, then lit a Vanilla candle when she walked out the door.  It helped, but only a little.  These things were crankin’ out stink like pickups off a Ford assembly line.

Monday came and went.  The Darlings oohed and ahhed over the “pets.”  The stench intensified over the hours exponentially.  I had vowed to keep them around until Friday anyway.  I figured even a Bloodhound like me could endure five days of offensive odor. 

I was wrong.  By Tuesday morning I had had enough.  They had to go.  Now to think of a way to escort them out the door without devastating Angel Face.  Hmmmmm.  Her mother is my coworker and dear friend.  I went to her first.  How should I handle this?  She didn’t want them back, even though she was suffering from a sinus infection and couldn’t smell a darn thing (lucky duck).  We collaborated on a “release back into nature” plan.  Yes, the perfect thing!

I tried to be casual about broaching the subject with the owner of the Stinkers.  “Pets are wonderful and we can learn so much from them, but they are happiest in the wild”… yada, yada.  She didn’t have to think long or hard about it.  Yes, she agreed they should be let go.  I silently rejoiced.

After music, I signed our merry group out of the building, grabbed the sloshing tank, held my nose, and stepped into glorious fresh air.  I asked the original owner if she would like to carry them.  She adamantly refused.  “They STINK!” she declared.  One little pixie offered to carry our captives.  I am not sure she took a breath the entire trek.  I don’t know how she didn’t faint, either from the fumes or lack of breathing. 

Angel Face’s mother had suggested a spot just on the edge of town.  We found the algae-covered slough and stopped.  Pixie was dripping from sloshed, rancid water, even though I had offered numerous times to take the nasty tank for her.  Every time I did so she turned a deeper shade of oxygen-starved purple and shook her head no. 

There was a deep band of cattails separating us from the water so we stayed on the pavement and removed the lid from the tank.  Well, now here was a fine predicament.  There was so much vegetation between the Darlings and the water that it was impossible to gently lay the creatures at the edge of the slough, which would have been a fine send-off indeed.  “What should we do, Mrs. Dahl?” they wanted to know.  I thought for a moment.  I sure wasn’t wading into that cesspool.  In fact I was pretty sure I didn’t.  My friend had warned me of this.  “I think we have to throw them in, children.”  Heads swiveled in my direction.  I could hear their thoughts.  Is she kidding??  “You mean like a baseball?” one Darling asked hesitantly.  Yes, exactly like a baseball.  “Don’t worry, children.  They’ll be much happier in the wild.”  Sailing through the air will be sort of like a carnival thrill ride, right?

A burly lad reached in the tank, found the biggest shell, leaned back and wound up like he was standing on the pitcher’s mound at Yankees Stadium, and let her go with all his might.  I thought maybe, just maybe, I could hear the teeniest snail-voiced, “weeeeeeeeee!”   

The process was repeated until all snails had had their turn being launched into the August air by the gusto of five brand new first graders.  I asked Angel Face if she had anything to say before we headed back.  She shook her head and looked relieved to no longer be the proud owner of five snails.

We raced back to our tiny brick schoolhouse in the humid late-summer day, empty tank evidence of our escapade.  I lustily sang all of the words to Born Free that I knew, which weren’t that many.

I watched my new students laughing and sweating and happy to be free of the confines of the school. 

What did they learn? 

They learned that sometimes there has to be a Plan B.  They learned that sometimes the kindest thing to do is let something go back to where it came from.  They learned that Mrs. Dahl isn’t much of a singer.  They learned that, contrary to conventional wisdom, snails really CAN fly.  They learned that the best science isn’t found on the two-dimensional pages of a textbook.

And I…

I fell in love with five precious, sweating, laughing children who will learn to love this big, wide world as much I do over the next nine months.

I have the greatest job in the world.