Tender is the Snail

Illustration by Vanessa Zhou

April 27, 2026

Dear Snails of the Hudson Valley,

I have two of your brethren living in a small pot in my small room, about 100 miles from their home. I would feel compelled to return them to your railroad siding, but they are enjoying a higher quality of life in my spider plant.

Why, might you ask, did I kidnap your compatriots? It is a long, treacherous story of heartbreak, exhaustion, and human perseverance.

Last fall, my dorm was bare; the drab walls begged for embellishment. I was struggling to decorate using museum maps, concert stubs, and 4”x6” photographs of a bygone summer, when I realized a small sentient being might be the easiest way to liven the place. I considered the draconian NO PET policy of Columbia University, and decided I didn’t want to be sentenced to forty years of hard labor for possession of cat.

Snail was the next logical choice. In particular, I needed a white-lipped snail (Cepaea hortensis). They have over 12,000 neurons wrapped throughout their tiny bodies. They don’t “see,” but they can sense lightness and darkness throughout their skin. I like to think they have a better sense of smell than a bloodhound. Best of all, they could easily be overlooked by a persnickety Resident Advisor in search of rule-breaking pets.

I also wanted a roommate who, like myself, had the natural ambition to devour baby bok choy, one leaf at a time. 

Alas, if I wanted to find snails in situ, I was too late. The plants outside were leafless and the snails had begun their underground slumber. I called a few exotic pet shops to see if they employed any snails who were thinking of retiring and relocating to a spider plant on the Upper West Side. 

No. They weren’t. 

The months rolled by and my dorm accumulated the trappings of college life. A mannequin rescued from the dumpster of a renovated GAP store stood guard next to my refrigerator. A Bob Ross-esque painting lifted from a garbage heap in Queens now leaned contentedly against the wall. And, an aesthetic tea kettle from my aunt burbled hot water once or twice a day as my vague interest in drinking tea with my (human) roommate grew. The photos I hung on the walls were of adventures with new friends, in my new city. I had forgotten almost entirely about the snails.

That was until late February, when I had a vivid flashback of a fish market I’d stumbled on in South Korea the summer before. I’d been wandering, seeking to find the most mundane areas of Seoul to cultivate a holistic opinion of the city. A fishmonger sat with his woven baskets containing hundreds of pearly-black land snails. I considered buying a few to release into the wild, but decided not to support the exploitive snail trafficking industry. 

Now in New York City, I had a premonition that there ought to be snails at a wet market in Chinatown. I grabbed my two most snail-curious buddies and went. While several of the fish markets had aquatic snails, none had any of the land variety. Instead we found Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Governor Kathy Hochul, and District Attorney Alvin Bragg marching uncomfortably in a Lunar New Year parade, wearing unwavering plastic smiles. I made eye contact with Hochul, and tried to shout something about how I wouldn’t vote for any of them if they didn’t start legislating on snails, but no one cared to listen.

My snail searching techniques became extreme.

I called a haughty French restaurant in Midtown and was laughed off the phone after innocently enquiring, “do you buy your snails live and could I borrow one?” One morning around 5 a.m., I went with a group of 20 fellow undergrads to the Fulton Fish Market (the second largest fish market in the world). The market had closed by the time we arrived, but I enquired nonetheless if they normally sold live snails. 

No, of course not. Not even sea snails.

Finally, I combed Google Maps and iNaturalist.org for recently-posted photos of snails. A pixelated snapshot of a white-lipped snail on a leaf on 79th Street caught my eye. A few Sundays later, I found myself traipsing through the drizzling rain to the American Museum of Natural History. Despite perfect snail-finding conditions, I found nothing but a soggy one-dollar bill.

As I slumped back to campus in the rain, questions swirled in my mind: How could there be no snails in a city as diverse as New York? Was there a vast conspiracy preventing me from finding these benevolent creatures? Did the rats/pigeons/raccoons/French eat all the snails? Every step toward snails sent me three steps backward. Was I doomed to walk this earth, forever searching?

I went home to the Hudson Valley. While sitting on a bench in front of a barber shop, a distant memory of a pandemic hike along an abandoned railroad brought snails into focus. Bringing my brother for protection, we idled around the desolate stretch of tracks looking for our molluskular companions. Finally, in the damp moss of a disintegrating culvert was nestled a small family of snails. We picked them up with their moss and placed them gently in a to-go container. The search was over. 

My life gained a paternal texture after adopting snails. I must nurture my gastropods. I am now compelled, daily, to sneak lettuce and discarded eggshells out of Ferris Booth Commons. In the wild, their lives could end with a misplaced footfall. But in their pot, tucked under the leaves of a spider plant, they are safe.

I am grateful, I will treat your fellow snails with honor, and I will return them to your community before May is half complete. 

Thank you for your slime–I mean time,

Sincerely,

David

P.S. (June, 2026): As it turns out, the snails are quite happy in my room. They’ve decided to have baby snails, and want them to grow up in my spider plant. They’re here to stay.