The Circle B Ranch

The way I see it, we live in the land of glory. We trip over new opportunities daily. Take late last year as a fer instance.

I had come down with a yearning to hear the trickle of a brook in my daily meditations. Sure, nearby Slab Creek runs with the freshets of spring and heavy summer rains, but I wanted something more, as in an everpresent trickle.

So, it’s autumn and I come across a cattle watering trough at Picton Farm Supply. That ignites smoke rings of thought. See what I mean about opportunity? You go into a place for bird seed and you come out with something for cattle. Chance, right?

I install the trough practically on my front veranda, a place where the creeping ground cover I call lawn will soon mask the outer rim of the trough and accent the mirror of the water. Also a place where I can hear the damn thing when I get to the trickle part.

Then came gravel and earth to create a pond base. Then came the inquiries from good-natured garden nursery folks humoured with the idea of someone buying pond plants in October. I tried to contain my stories about trickling water to five minutes or when I noticed their eyes beginning to glaze over, whichever came first. It was a task at times, I’ll tell you. I mean the keepin’ it to the five minutes part. Trickling water contains a ton of conversation-making metaphors for life’s exigencies, I like to remind folks.

So it is not long after the pond plants were installed when, overnight, I have a client for a stay over. Or so I thought. I named him Buster: a bullfrog that I thought was contemplating an over-winter stay. But, alas, my trips back to the nursery for more plants, a pond pump for the trickling thing were in vain. Two days after installing the pond heater to keep the water surface free of ice so that Buster and the plants wouldn’t perish, I’ll be damned if the ungrateful frog that he apparently was didn’t skip town for yonder pastures. But, in the face of adversity comes opportunity, I believe. Fast forward to today.

Turns out, as a new season is upon us and I am estimating the recovery rate of my pond plants and enjoying the planting of mosses on floating log slabs, mosses that came with the ferns that Dwayne recently dug up in his back yard and gave me after a tour in his ’39 Ford Roadster after I found him on Kijjii while looking for copper mosquito screening, which he also posted. Opportunities everywhere!

But the following day, after planting the moss, half of them vanished as quickly as Buster had; leaving traces of dirt floating on the water surface. No signs of moose tracks or other moss aficionados that I can think of. I replant and wait a day: gone again, except for remnants.

So, in the calm of one recent morning, coffee in hand, I study my pond up close. Looking for clues when…OMG! Snails! Not one, but a hundred, I swear. A circus of them. Some floating on their backs like they are in a swimming pool in Miami after two martinis. Some look like divers in wetsuits and scuba gear scouring the depths of the pond walls. Some…mmm? Seeming to be in conjugal splendour? Looks like it, at least. Others? Grazing on my firkin moss! Caught in the act! And the act, wouldn’t you know, launches me into research on the subject of pond snails. They have teeth for grazing on greens. Go figure!

“Often introduced involuntarily with water plants, but also many people like to have them and so put them into their ponds on purpose,” sez the experts. Opportunity, sez I.

Some species of pond snails can reach a shell size of up to 7 cm. That makes them considerably larger than the Roman Snail (aka Helix pomatia), the largest European terrestrial snail. Now we’re talking. Turkey-size snails! And, just like my friend Buster, pond snails breathe with lungs: gotta surface from time to time to grab some oxygen. Incidentally, a pond snail floating on its back while taking in oxygen also looks like a character out of Snow White. They smile while doing the back stroke. Or maybe not a smile? Apparently, they need not surface entirely, as they are able to crawl on a mucus band, hanging from the water’s surface. Try that one at the beach sometime and let me know how you make out.

But the thing comes down to opportunity. I can now be a snail rancher, the latest addition to the suppliers to the haute cuisine market. As in escargot. Or better yet, I could be a breeder of thoroughbreds for the snail racing crowd. A very large audience, I’m told. Slab Creek could hold the Kentucky Derby of the snail jockey set and my pond could be the breeding barns of a snail-class Northern Dancer.

So by now, I’m working on the brand for ‘Ranchero Basommatophora’—the big word for pond snails. And remember, next time you’re at the snail-racing track, bet on the Circle B for a sure winner to take home the cup. Also remember: opportunity rules in our land of glory.