May 12, 2023 The wonder of snails. I grew up with my pockets filled with wonders—bug-eyed toads from the garden, lizards and snakes from the woodshed, and slime-trailing gastropod hermaphrodites coiled inside their tawny shells. I was a free-range child before someone coined the word. And I carried the wild home with me each evening. I filled my red Radio Flyer with water and minnows from the creek. I raised baby quail hatched in an incubator I constructed from a Styrofoam ice chest and a light bulb. I learned the names of birds. My bedroom was a menagerie of gurgling fish tanks and glowing terraria, containing—most of the time—rattlesnakes and boa constrictors, scorpions and tarantulas. My mom dared not enter. (Somewhere in the crawlspace beneath my childhood home lives a very large snake.)
The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher
The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher
The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher
May 12, 2023 The wonder of snails. I grew up with my pockets filled with wonders—bug-eyed toads from the garden, lizards and snakes from the woodshed, and slime-trailing gastropod hermaphrodites coiled inside their tawny shells. I was a free-range child before someone coined the word. And I carried the wild home with me each evening. I filled my red Radio Flyer with water and minnows from the creek. I raised baby quail hatched in an incubator I constructed from a Styrofoam ice chest and a light bulb. I learned the names of birds. My bedroom was a menagerie of gurgling fish tanks and glowing terraria, containing—most of the time—rattlesnakes and boa constrictors, scorpions and tarantulas. My mom dared not enter. (Somewhere in the crawlspace beneath my childhood home lives a very large snake.)