EUELL'S COUNTRY

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THE SNAIL

Come listen to this little tale about the lowly humble snail: While crawling on a rotten log, he isn't putting on the dog. He doesn't think, as on he labors, that he is better than his neighbors, nor that he is a little god — he knows he's just a gastropod.

Though he is host to liver flukes, he doesn't merit our rebukes. He doesn't do as humans do and brag of blood that's really blue. He mentions not his family tree and does not care for pedigree — admits his kin are slugs and whelks and doesn't try to join the Elks.

When Cupid's bow lets fly a dart that strikes the snail's two-chambered heart and he starts out his love to find, he doesn't seek a higher kind. He knows no name in upper crust will help him satisfy his lust, and genealogy can't prevail when he just wants another snail.

False pride is never his asylum. He knows Mollusca is his phylum, and though his gait is very slow, he really has no place to go; with ventral nerve, without a spine, he still thinks life is pretty fine. All arguments are sure to fail; he's satisfied to be a snail.

I thank whatever gods there be that such a fate was not for me — that evolution did not swerve till man had brain and dorsal nerve — that upright stance and flattened face prove mankind is a higher race. I swell my chest with pride — and then — I see the works of these great men.

I look around me, see our land with junk cars piled on every hand — billboards obstructing every view — a parking lot where trees once grew — polluted air — polluted streams — eroded sail and broken dreams — arising crime rate — crowded jails.

Are humans really smart as snails?

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