My oldest just turned 13 years old. For Halloween, we bought him an inflatable suit of an alien. His 10-year-old brother is Larry Bird from the 1980s. He’s a huge basketball fan and already sports Bird’s blond locks. We bought him a fake mustache.
My daughter is a snail. If you knew her, this would make you smile, for she is a bundle of energy. She is an extrovert, like her mom, and bounces from one activity to the next, from friend’s house to friend’s house.
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However, she wished to be a snail, and my mother crafted her costume, a tradition that has been upheld each year throughout my daughter's life. Her shell is a backpack covered with brown fabric. She wears a headband with antennae. The slime, which is actually called the mucin, is a wispy train with lights sewn into the fabric. It’s magical.
Snails are magical. Since my daughter made her costume choice, I have noticed several around our neighborhood. Likely, snails have always been around, but my antennas are alert for their presence. Snails live almost everywhere, including on hydrothermal vents in the Indian Ocean, up to 8,000 feet below sea level. North America has about 500 native species of land snails. The largest living sea snail species is the Syrinx aruanus, which can weigh up to 40 pounds. That’s not much smaller than my daughter.
I have seen tiny snails on cloudy, rainy days because the sun would dry out their bodies. They tuck in their shells for protection. The ones I’ve seen have spiral shells that expand in the Fibonacci sequence, meaning each element is the sum of the two elements that precede it. It’s an elegant design.
The word "snail" originates from the root "snog" and signifies the act of creeping or crawling. Snails really are slow — only two or three feet per hour. That wouldn’t be ideal for trick-or-treating, but the little guys do eat almost anything, even Twizzlers and probably other kinds of rubber. I wrote “guys,” but actually they are hermaphrodites.
I like alien costumes, old-school Larry Bird, and any excuse to wear a fake mustache. However, my daughter’s outfit has brought the bonus delight of learning more about an extraordinary creature. The world is full of delight, including grandmothers who sew magical costumes. This one even added a few hearts on the shell — not biologically accurate, of course. But, somehow fitting, I think.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of Little Big Moments, a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems. Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.