HURRAY FOR HAIRY SNAIL HUNTERS

by Jerome Betts

Search is on for the German hairy snail in London:

Conchologists and citizen scientists team up to seek

out endangered mollusc species along River Thames.

—The Guardian,November 24, 2025

  

Hush, hush, chortle who dares,

At people out looking for shells growing hairs!

They’re along by the Thames under pieces of  wood,

Only fingernail-sized, though they may have withstood

A break from old Europe worse than Boris’s Brexit

As Doggerland sank and sea rose to annex it.

So here’s to conchologists, clean-shaven or hirsute,

As they seek tiny molluscs encased in a fur suit!

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online.

FAREWELL, NAMESAKE I NEVER KNEW

by George Salamon

"For roughly a decade, the land snail species Achatinella apexfulva, which used to be plentiful on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, was believed to be down to a single survivor. His name was George, and he lived his last days alone in a terrarium in Kailua. Hawaii . . . but on Jan. 1, George died. . . . His death was symbolic of a steep decline in the population of land snails." —The New York Times, January 10, 2019  Photo Credit: Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources

I wish I had met you, on a
Stroll on a beach in Oahu,
One George and another.
Two anachronisms in
The age of speed.
Your species and mine
Face extinction, mine
By its own hand, yours
By predators that hunt you.
I read that you looked like a
"Swirled scoop of mocha fudge."
Ours would have been a sweet
Friendship, and I would have
Watched you as a buddy does,
And wondered if you knew we
Were both of a dying kind.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.