Gerald Durrell - The Corfu Trilogy

One day we had one of those freak storms when the sky turned blue-black and the lightning fretted a silver filigree across it. And then had come the rain – great, fat, heavy drops, as warm as blood. When the storm had passed, the sky had been washed to the clear blue of a hedge-sparrow’s egg and the damp earth sent out wonderfully rich, almost gastronomic smells as of fruit-cake or plum pudding; and the olive trunks steamed as the rain was dried off them by the sun, each trunk looking as though it were on fire. Roger and I liked these summer storms. It was fun to be able to splash through the puddles and feel one’s clothes getting wetter and wetter in the warm rain. In addition to this, Roger derived considerable amusement by barking at the lightning. When the rain ceased we were passing the myrtle forests, and I went in on the off-chance that the storm might have brought out some creatures that would normally be sheltering from the heat of the day. Sure enough, on a myrtle branch there were two fat, honey- and amber-coloured snails gliding smoothly towards each other, their horns waving provocatively. Normally, I knew, in the height of the summer, these snails would aestivate. They would attach themselves to a convenient branch, construct a thin, paper like front door over the mouth of the shell, and then retreat deep into its convolutions in order to husband the moisture in their bodies from the fierce heat of the sun. This freak storm had obviously awakened them and made them feel gay and romantic. As I watched them they glided up to each other until their horns touched. Then they paused and gazed long and earnestly into each other’s eyes. One of them then shifted his position slightly so that he could glide alongside the other one. When he was alongside, something happened that made me doubt the evidence of my own eyes. From his side, and almost simultaneously from the side of the other snail, there shot what appeared to be two minute, fragile white darts, each attached to a slender white cord. The dart from snail one pierced the side of snail two and disappeared, and the dart from snail two performed a similar function on snail one. So, there they were, side by side attached to each other by the two little white cords. And there they sat like two curious sailing ships roped together. This was amazing enough, but stranger things were to follow. The cords gradually appeared to get shorter and shorter and drew the two snails together. Peering at them so closely that my nose was almost touching them, I came to the incredulous conclusion that each snail, by some incredible mechanism in its body, was winching its rope in, thus hauling the other until presently their bodies were pressed tightly together. I knew they must be mating, but their bodies had become so amalgamated that I could not see the precise nature of the act. They stayed rapturously side by side for some fifteen minutes and then, without so much as a nod or a thank you, they glided away in opposite directions, neither one displaying any signs of darts or ropes, or indeed any sign of enthusiasm at having culminated their love affair successfully.

I was so intrigued by this piece of behaviour that I could hardly wait until the following Thursday, when Theodore came to tea, to tell him about it. Theodore listened, rocking gently on his toes and nodding gravely while I graphically described what I had witnessed.

‘Aha, yes,’ he said when I had finished. ‘You were… um… you know… um… extremely lucky to see that. I have watched any number of snails and I have never seen it.’

I asked whether I had imagined the little darts and the ropes.

‘No, no,’ said Theodore. ‘That’s quite correct. The darts are formed of a sort of… um… calcium-like substance and once they have penetrated the snail, they, you know, disappear… dissolve. It seems there is some evidence to think that the darts cause a tingling sensation which the snails… um… apparently find pleasant.’

I asked whether I was right in assuming that each snail had winched its rope in.

‘Yes, yes, that’s quite correct,’ said Theodore. ‘They apparently have some… um… sort of mechanism inside which can pull the rope back again.’

I said I thought it was one of the most remarkable things I had ever seen.

‘Yes, indeed. Extremely curious,’ said Theodore, and then added a bomb-shell that took my breath away. ‘Once they are alongside, the… um… male half of one snail mates with the, um… female half of the other snail and… um, vice versa , as it were.’

It took me a moment or so to absorb this astonishing information. Was I correct in assuming, I inquired cautiously, that each snail was both male and female?

‘Um. Yes,’ said Theodore, ‘hermaphrodite.’

His eyes twinkled at me and he rasped the side of his beard with his thumb. Larry, who had been wearing the pained expression he normally wore when Theodore and I discussed natural history, was equally astonished by this amazing revelation of the snails’ sex life.

‘Surely you’re joking, Theodore?’ he protested. ‘You mean to say that each snail is both a male and a female?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Theodore, adding with masterly understatement, ‘it’s very curious.’

‘Good God,’ cried Larry. ‘I think it’s unfair. All those damned slimy things wandering about seducing each other like mad all over the bushes, and having the pleasures of both sensations. Why couldn’t such a gift be given to the human race? That’s what I want to know.’

‘Aha, yes. But then you would have to lay eggs,’ Theodore pointed out.

‘True,’ said Larry, ‘but what a marvellous way of getting out of cocktail parties – “I’m terribly sorry I can’t come,” you would say. “I’ve got to sit on my eggs.” ’

Theodore gave a little snort of laughter.

‘But snails don’t sit on their eggs,’ he explained. ‘They bury them in damp earth and leave them.’

‘The ideal way of bringing up a family,’ said Mother, unexpectedly but with immense conviction. ‘I wish I’d been able to bury you all in some damp earth and leave you.’

‘That’s an extremely harsh and ungrateful thing to say,’ said Larry. ‘You’ve probably given Gerry a complex for the rest of his life.’

But if the conversation had given me a complex, it was one about snails, for I was already planning vast snail-hunting expeditions with Roger, so that I could bring dozens of them back to the villa and keep them in tins, where I could observe them shooting their love darts at each other to my heart’s content. But, in spite of the fact that I caught hundreds of snails during the next few weeks, kept them incarcerated in tins and lavished every care and attention on them (even gave them simulated thunder-storms with the aid of a watering can), I could not get them to mate.

The only other time I saw snails indulging in this curious love-play was when I succeeded in obtaining a pair of the giant Roman, or apple, snails that lived on the stony outcrops of the Mountain of the Ten Saints, and the only reason I was able to get up there and capture these snails was because, on my birthday, Mother had purchased for me my heart’s desire, a sturdy baby donkey.

Although, ever since we arrived in Corfu, I had been aware that there were vast quantities of donkeys there – indeed the entire agricultural economy of the island depended on them – I had not really concentrated on them until we had gone to Katerina’s wedding. Here a great number of the donkeys had brought with them their babies, many of them only a few days old. I was enchanted by their bulbous knees, their great ears, and their wobbling, uncertain walk and I had determined then, come what might, that I would possess a donkey of my own.