And Now You Have Some Useless Information!

  Mark has the camper shell off the back of his old truck while he hauls lumber for the redo of the Little Bayou House.  The old, white camper shell is sitting under the grapefruit trees gathering dust which turns to a sort of mold/algae with all of the recent rains. The top turned a hideous shade of greenish grey and really needed a good scrubbing....but not by me!  Today, I found that something was trying its best to do that job for me!

  The blue jays discovered yet another chicken snake high in the oak tree.  This one was venturing forth to raid a squirrel's nest and the birds were not overly happy about it.  They set up their normal ruckus at daybreak.  Since I am determined to photograph just about any slithering snake on the Bayou, I slipped out to find the critter.  I did not. I was sidetracked by a most unusual pattern on the top of the camper shell!  This, at the moment, was deemed a bit more interesting than any old chicken snake.  I was mesmerized by the feathery patterns that wormed their way across the top of the roof.  This was fascinating!

  To be perfectly honest here, I was a bit bewildered as to what made the swirly tracks.  My first thought was a centipede or millipede but something did not seem right with that idea.  This called for a bit of investigation!  

  It took a while but I found it!  It seems that snails are feasting upon the algae growing on the old camper shell.  The tracks are left behind as they munched the algae.  The "feathery" part was created by the snails' radula (radulae?)  Radula is a structure in the mouth of a snail that is used to scrape food (such as the algae) off of the surface and into the mouth.  It is described as being rasp-like.  That snail was leaving behind a beautiful pattern as it used its radula!  There are artists in nature and snails are some of the best! Ok, ok, so perhaps I really am the only one that finds this interesting but at least now your brain is filled with another bit of useless information! Carry on, Snails!  Carry on!