#68 🏕 Make a break for the OUTSIDE wild 🧳

In brief 🩲

• Journal: Slowly making a break for it
• Practical: Delisting your inbox
• Listen: Charging into the outside wild with naught but a whim

From the journal 📖

I nearly fell backwards avoiding a snail making a break for it across our wooden floorboards. It was early evening and the light in the hallway was dim. My wife Vic prefers low wattage lightbulbs, which really lack the punch to illuminate your path around obstacles at night. We’ll be more relaxed in the dim light, but will sometimes fall over things. I guess that’s a trade-off.

Taking a closer look, I understood that this was not one snail, but ten. I didn’t need to count them off to reach that figure. I knew these snails had emerged from an ice-cream container sitting on the cabinet beside the front door. This container originally housed ten snails. But now it was empty.

My son Neko had a friend staying that night, Jasmine, who had brought the snails with her. Jasmine had been worried about the snails’ wellbeing overnight. Although I assured her that the holes poked in the ice-cream container lid were enough, before going to bed she must have crept back and partially removed the lid to give then more air. And an escape route.

I didn’t put the snail back straight away, because first I had to take a moment to marvel at the tenacity of this snail, illuminated from behind from another dim light in the lounge. The little fella had only traversed a metre of physical distance, but in pretty good time, given he first had to navigate a cabinet top, a pot plant and a wall.

I gathered up all the snail buddies to return them to Jasmine’s ice-cream container. Some had made a break for the ceiling, across picture frames and light switches. Others lurked in the dark around the skirting boards. As for the three I never found, well, I don’t know what happened to them. Freedom, perhaps? Even though Jasmine had been so concerned about putting her snails to bed, she never bothered to count them off the next morning.