Once upon a time there was a snail named Kitty (her mother was a little insane). Kitty had older siblings, but one rainy night they got stepped on by a young man who happened to be wandering barefoot around the block. He like the way they crunched. Perhaps it was best, since their names were almost as ridiculous as Kitty’s.

Sometimes her mother would call her to come in from playing in the mud. She would holler (if a snail can be said to do such a thing), “Here, Kitty!” then laugh quietly into her shell. Maybe she wasn’t all that insane. Just warped.

Everyone knows, or should know, or at least have figured out, that snails don’t live as long a humans. This has nothing to do with being stepped on, either. They simply have tiny life-spans. So a couple of hours for us is a huge block of time for a snail. In fact, a snail’s whole day is actually only a quarter of a human hour.

So. One quarter of an hour in the morning of kitty’s first day of life, when she was practically a teenager, she decided she wanted to go exploring. As she oozed out of the tree stump, her mother waved her antennae at her.

“Bye, dear. Stay away from salt.”

“Duh, mom,” Kitty replied, heaving herself over a stone. “See you later.”

Since snails are historically slow-moving creatures, at least by human standards, and even by the standards of beings their own size, it took Kitty another full hour to make it to the end of the grass and onto the sidewalk. By this time, she was entering young adulthood.

She looked from side to side to make sure one of the Big Flat Things that had crushed her siblings was nowhere about before making her way onto the cement. It must be noted that Kitty was not especially upset about the whole crushing incident, since the smashed siblings had been brothers she’d never really known, and since snails in general are not emotional animals. They don’t cry and rarely laugh, which is why Kitty’s mother was considered such a nut case.

Well, halfway across the sidewalk, Kitty sensed something unpleasant. It was big and had horrible breath, and it was watching her from not too far away. It was, in fact, a cat. A cat, coincidentally, named Snail.

As a rule, cats ignore the names we give them. They choose to respond to tones of voice instead, so if you had a cat named Fluffy, but you said, “Here, Moron” in an especially pleasant tone of voice, Fluffy would look up from washing her, uh, herself and meow in response. It has been conjectured that a meow under those circumstances could very well be the cat-equivalent of “bite me.” We may never know.

This cat named Snail, therefore, was oblivious to the irony of its name, especially considering how it was busy contemplating putting out a paw and swatting the incredibly slow-moving Kitty. If only the two could have communicated, it may have gone like this:

>SWAT!that

fast!”

“Why are you talking to me?”

“Why not? What are you, by the way?”

“A cat.”

“Ah. I’m a snail.”

“That’s for sure.”

“I’ll ignore that. My name is Kitty.”

“Ha! My

name is Snail!”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Nope.”

“Wow. Our mothers should get together – and go join a support group or something.”

“Well, now that you’re on the other side, what are you going to do, Kitty? Hee-hee!”

“I’m not exactly sure. I just wanted to see what was over here…Snail.”

“Are you snickering?”

“Me? We don’t snicker. We are snails. We ooze.”

“Just the same, I could swear I detected a small snicker.”

“Never mind. Anyway, I’m not getting any younger, so I’d better just have a quick look around and then, if you wouldn’t mind, could you, er, swat me back to the other side again?”

“Okay.”

“Thanks, Snail.”

“No problem, Kitty.”

“Stop giggling.”

“Sorry.”

However, they cannot communicate, so the above exchange did not, nor ever will, take place. Not on this planet.

Ha.

Kitty soldiered on, hoping to make it to what looked like the safety of the tall grass before the huge, furry thing did something distressing. Breathing on her, for instance, from a closer distance. That would be too gross for words, she thought. Thankfully, for the sake of her own sanity, Kitty had never heard the phrase, “Would madam like the escargot?” Not, of course, that such a phrase had ever been directed at a cat. We hope.

Snail watched Kitty with mild curiosity as the snail determinedly ignored the kitty.

Is this a nail-biter, or what?

Just as Kitty began to pass the first blade of grass, the cat got up and walked away, and if the snail had owned a bosom, it would have been heaving in a sudden rush of breathless relief. As it was, however, Kitty merely thought, WOW! That was close! and began to inspect her new surroundings.

She found a discarded potato chip bag, but sensed the salt and left it alone. She found a Starburst wrapper, crawled under it and noted how the light there was oddly pink (it was from a strawberry one), checked out some cigarette butts – not a pleasant experience – and decided it was time to head back home. She was, after all, middle-aged by this time.

Kitty would have another half-day of life after this day was over, but already she felt that she’d lived a full and exciting one. If she failed to survive the trek across the sidewalk on the return trip, she would die a contented snail.

She did not. Die, that is, or at least not while oozing over the cement, following the gleaming trail she’d left on her first crossing. By the time she made it home, she was married and – sorry, but she actually met a male of her kind as soon as she got back into the lawn, and they mated somewhere between there and the tree stump – ready to settle into motherhood.

In the meanwhile, Kitty’s mother had come out of the stump so she could die without leaving her shell inside to clutter things up. She was ancient at this point, but still very strange. “Hello, Kitty,” she said (it is possible, although highly unlikely, that someone had left a San Rio product on the grass when Kitty’s mother was much younger – like earlier the previous day, perhaps). “How was your trip? Tell me quickly, please; I’m about to expire.”

“Ah, I met a huge fuzzy with bad breath, avoided a bag of salt, rested in pink-lit grass, and encountered some highly stinky things. Then I met Brad (please don’t ask), we, er, did it, and now I’m ready to start a family.”

“Good girl,” murmured her mother, hanging onto the teensy spark of life that still remained, albeit fitfully, within her. “Have fun naming them, eh?”

“Yes, mother. Thank you for everything. I’ll tell them all about you.”

“Aw, you’re a good girl. Always was. Good-bye, darling.”

“Good-bye, mom. Love you.”

“Poop.”

I’m sure this was not what she meant to say, but the actual word got stuck in her little snail throat and died with her. Kitty sighed sadly, nudged the shell a bit so it rolled somberly down the hill in front of the stump, and went inside to have babies, name them, watch them grow up and have adventures, and die a contented snail.

All of which she did.


THE END

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 16.10.2011

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