On Saturday, we offered our second family investigation workshop for members. Using what we’ve learned from the Institute for Inquiry, we investigated garden snails. These little critters turn out to be wonderful to watch–they don’t run away (at least not very fast), they have a non-squishy part to hold onto, they don’t bite, they are completely captivating, and I can easily find them in my garden. Once every few months or so, my housemates find me out in the garden at night with my headlamp and a container, pulling snails off of the garden wall. I put them into a plastic tub and keep them until it’s time for class. On Saturday morning, I woke up to one of my housemates noticing that one of them was on the outside of the lid. I’m not sure how it got out, but luckily, they’re not very fast.
My favorite part was the snail climbing wall/obstacle course, in which snails climbed a post in the classroom that was decorated with a variety of textures, pathways, and loop-the-loops. The snails reliably start making their way up the post when you set them on the course. They don’t, however, reliably crawl through paper tubes- even when there’s a treat at the end. Once in the tube, they seem very content to stay there.
Here’s my haiku:
Small, curious snail
Sliding with spiraling home
Squish, slop, suction, stuck
Here is a link to a participant’s blog: http://whydwell.blogspot.com/2008/11/we-love-snails.html.
That sounds like it went really well, Anne! I wish I could have seen the snail climbing course in action!
I also really like your snail haiku, and the fact that it is a haiku on a subject that most people probably don’t consider very poetic.
It reminds me of a website called ihatecilantro.com which has hundreds of anti-cilantro haikus. I think they’re really creative: http://www.ihatecilantro.com/haikus.php Also, these haikus are another way of reminding us about perception and how different our senses can really be from each other.
What sort of treats did you use to entice the snails to go through tubes? I wonder if snails’ palates are as varied as humans…maybe some snails would write cilantrophilic haikus (if they could write) while other snails would hate on it?
Man, we sure live in the 21st century! How cool is it to have a class at the Exploratorium and be able to look at a blog entry about it by the teacher and a participant. Pretty dang awesome!
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