Author Archives: wendywelch

The Monday Book – The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

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The Monday Book: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

This charming little book (it can be read in about two hours) was on the shelf at the cabin where I’m holed up getting some writing done. I took it down because it had a pretty drawing on the cover, and read it because it contained the enticing phrase “Viruses are a part of life.”

Well, yes…..

The premise of the book makes good reading during a pandemic: the author is ill with an unusual condition that started with a virus and progressed to a dysfunctional autonomic nerve system. In essence, she couldn’t sit up because gravity did things to her it didn’t do to the rest of the world. Lying flat with minimal movement was hard for a formerly active and healthy gardener, so when a friend brought her some wild violets in a pot, she picked up a woodland snail for good measure. Why she thought the snail would interest her friend, neither woman could ever say.

But the snail did. At first as confused by its new surroundings as Elisabeth was by hers, stuck in care, dependent on friends to do almost everything for her, the snail began to explore at night, eating pieces of paper and flowers brought by friends of the invalid.

Slowly the author came to understand the snail as she did her own illness; move slower through the world, take time for one’s needs, and appreciate the small miracles. But the book is not so much sentimental as descriptive. Learning how a snail’s foot allows these miraculous little creatures to travel over even razor-thin edges without harm is surprisingly fascinating. Likewise discovering that they can seal themselves into their own shells with a special foot slime, or repair their shells with a different kind of slime.

And then there is snail sex…. did you know they literally sling love darts at one another? They do.

Sometimes the right book comes into our lives at the right time. I’m holed up in an unwired cabin to get some writing done, trying to slow down in a world that has had some strangely enforced slowdowns of late, and yet still wanting to undulate along. Like the snail that Elisabeth found she could actually hear eating, so quiet was her life, I am becoming aware of many new things around me. We all are in this strange new world. So take some time to read about the small things in life – the snails and the viruses – that make up this beautiful, peaceful memoir.

Wait, What Just Happened?

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First of all, hello everyone, I am glad to be back. The COVID CONSPIRACIES book is with the publisher and I have a respite before the medical professionals anthology from rural COVID experiences goes off in October.

So I come up for air and realize my house is a tip and the garden doesn’t so much look like we planted things as tripped with a tray of seeds. There’s a cat in here I don’t recognize and two days ago my husband (at least, he said he was; I hadn’t seen him in awhile and wasn’t sure) came in holding up a bleeding hand.

“A turtle bit me,” he said.

Okay…….

It turns out, he was sitting in his front porch man-cave where he hangs out to watch the world pass by and talk to the neighbors, and, well, a turtle crossed the road. Slowly. Too slowly for my animal-loving husband, who went out to help the little creature along his or her way.

In gratitude for which, the turtle turned its long neck around over its shell and took a triangular chunk out of the fleshy part of Jack’s palm. The police sketch artist who worked with Jack after the incident suggests it mighta been a snapper.

My husband did not let go and neither did the turtle, until both were safely across the street. When Jack came in bleeding, I did what any good wife would do: took a photo for Facebook, and then spread the wound with peroxide followed by antibiotic cream. Then I got on the horn to a doctor friend. Once she stopped laughing, she said, yes, maybe Jack should get a tetanus shot as turtles, ehm, carry things.

Our good Dr. Ashley Blevins called in a shot, and after a wee bit of fankle with the pharmacy –“No, really a turtle, yes, today, sure we can come down there after supper”–we both got tetanus shots. It was a couples thing, like a pandemic date.

This eased my mind, because of all that I wasn’t prepared to deal with, trying to get the book in, my husband dying of a turtle bite during a global health crisis wasn’t on the list. Can you imagine trying to write that obituary? People would try so hard to be respectful of my loss, but end up giggling. “A turtle? Really? Did anyone see the rabbit?” “Why did the turtle cross the road, anyway?” Etc.

Thanks to a couple of doctor pals and our friendly neighborhood pharmacist (who did snort behind his mask but kept the laughter in) all is well at Chez JacknWendy. For the next ten years, because that’s how long tetanus shots last. Come at us, turtles.