helix aspersa or common garden snail

It’s drizzling in the Bay Area as I write this – which is news in and of itself given the time of year – and the snails are out in full force.

I think they’re cute, so I don’t eat them, but many people do – though I would find out if my neighbors used snail poison first.

The garden snails around here, as I understand it, are nonnatives descended from those brought into the US from France as a food item in the mid-19th century.  These European Brown Snails (helix aspersa) escaped and took over, being stronger than the natives, and really are escargot.