Escargot or Just Plain Old Snails?

It is interesting how something can jog a memory that for so long lay dormant in the back of the brain. Today while on the pier, a single snail caught my attention and held it for quite some time. Not that this creature was doing anything spectacular ..actually being a snail, it was not "doing" much of anything other than hanging on a piece of marsh grass. I sat staring at this slow moving "sloth" of the gastropod world. They just sort of hang around doing lovely snaily things and then whenever it strikes their fancy, they slowly move to another blade of grass. (Not unlike a sloth in the rain forest!) This "snail" is actually a Marsh Periwinkle and is a variety of Escargot. Marsh Periwinkles are edible and can be found quite abundantly in the marshes here. Not too many people ever think of it as a food source..I know that I have never had the inclination to make a meal of them! This lone snail jogged a memory from long, long ago. "Back in the day"..now that really tells my age..my grandmother told me a story of a time when she was given a tiny, toy cast iron stove. Her mother sent her out to play with this stove. She was not satisfied with pretend cooking so she decided to try out her stove with real food. She gathered a mess of Periwinkles, cooked them in a can on this stove and then dined quite happily on her meal. She was quite ingenious to use a hairpin to pull the unlucky critter from its shell for consumption. She thought they were delicious!

I guess it was not really uncommon for children to play with fire, tromp in marsh or eat strange things in my grandmother's day. I am sure that we did things that made my mother's hair turn gray prematurely, too. There were times that I wondered how my own three survived their childhoods. I tried to let my children learn by experience while living on the Bayou. They did things that their peers had never heard of..nor..thought of doing. They walked to the creek, went "scavenging" along the shoreline, released an alligator into the Bayou, fished in the Bay, planted gardens and made friends with "wild" animals. I had everything from frogs and crabs to baby otters in my bathtub. More than once I found baby birds and baby squirrels in boxes in their rooms. At one point, there was even a baby 'possum taking up residence in the living room! Any homeless animal ended up as our house guest until it was able to be released into the wild again. I think children need to interact with wildlife to gather a healthy respect for nature. Maybe not by eating the Marsh Periwinkles but still experiencing a life that did not always involve some type of "artificial" entertainment. Don't get me wrong..my kids had their game systems and all sorts of toys..maybe too many..but there was always a healthy mix. When they get together now that they are grown, more often than not..it is these times that they are reminiscing.

My..how we have changed through the years..no parent these days would dream of allowing their little one to do these things! Things change from generation to generation and sometimes it is for the better..but then..maybe not.