Flower Pot Science Lab

Do you ever watch Franklin? You know his cute little buddy, Snail? We have one of those — a cute little land snail. He (or she) lives in the potted peace lily in our dining/school room. We didn’t set out to have a pet snail on purpose. I found him in the bottom of the basket that the peace lily and various and sundry other plants were in when I re-potted the survivors a few months after my grandmother’s funeral this past summer. (Yeah, I’m not so good with plants..of any sort. Peace lilies are about the only things that survive at my house.)

So, anyway, I almost tossed him outside when I found him back in August, but, after considering a moment, I decided that he might be beneficial for the plant and if I hadn’t even noticed he was in there up until that point, surely he wouldn’t hurt anything — or, you know, get out of the pot and go crawling around my house.

It’s been really fun to observe him and he’s not especially shy. Sometimes we’ll see him climbing a little way up a peace lily stalk. Other times, he’ll let us pick him up without withdrawing into his shell. Every so often, we’ll toss a piece or two of cat food in there. We figured we can’t keep the slugs out of the cat food outside, so it must be something edible for a snail.

Other than those observations, we didn’t really seek to make a real educational venture out of having a pet snail. We’d never looked him up to see exactly what kind of snail he was or to find out anymore about him.
Well, not until a couple of weeks ago, that is — when we discovered what could only be a baby snail in there with him!

At that point, we were curious if the only plausible explanation really was true – did our snail reproduce itself?

It did!

Turns out, our snail was rather easily identified as a Xolotrema denotatum, commonly called a velvet wedge snail — a fairly common land snail. Although these snails typically mate with another snail of the same species, in rare instances, they are able to self-reproduce, having both the male and female reproductive organs. They lay their eggs in moist, loose soil.

In addition to the baby pictured above, I have since found at least three other babies — the smallest ones no bigger than the tip of a pencil. I think I’ve found some eggs, too, but I’m not 100% sure. A few days after we found the first baby, I took a picture of Mama (and/or Daddy) Snail, eating a piece of cat food. It wasn’t until I got the picture downloaded to my computer that I realized that Baby Snail was eating, too. If you look closely, you can see it on the left side of the picture.

It’s unexpected moments like these when I love homeschooling! Could I have a pet snail if we didn’t homeschool? Sure…but I know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t.

What unexpected fun learning moments have you and your family shared lately?

Kris is the sweet-tea-drinking, classically eclectic, slightly Charlotte Mason, homeschooling mom to her three Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.