A Snail's Tale

We have a little round fish tank sitting on the bar of our kitchen.  In it, there is a calico goldfish, named Cali...so creative right?  Also in it, is a snail that helps keep the tank "clean".  Our little sucker snail, awwww.
Recently, we suddenly noticed several small brown bumps in the tank.  Looking closer, hubs and I realized they were BABY SNAILS.  We both looked at each other wide eyed saying "how in the hell did THAT happen?"
So we googled...and discovered that snails are hermaphrodites!  Check it out:

Snails are considered to be hermaphrodites.  This means that every snail will have both male and female reproductive organs. 

(photo credit Johannes_Meisenheimer )

Did you know that?  I didn't know that - neither did hubs.  I guess I never considered how snails reproduce, but it kinda blew our minds to have one snail and suddenly have one snail and three babies.  I wonder if our little hermaphrosnail will keep going?  Will we end up with like...30 snail babies and 1 goldfish?  hmmmm - I guess we'll find out.

I remember when our family from Colorado came for a visit last year and while they were loading stuff into their car, they found a garden snail in the driveway.  I looked out the window and all of them were gathered around in a circle gazing at the garden snail.  Apparantly, they don't have basic garden snails in Colorado....maybe because of the altitude?  Who knows - I googled and didn't find much info on that.

Ironically, Colorado was the first place hubs ever tried escargot.  He liked it - but it seems to me, almost anything would be good drowned in that much garlic butter.  I bowed out because I was pregnant at the time, and not dealing with the altitude well.  I am still a snail virgin...wahooo.

I'm starting to think I must be hard up for things to post about during this NaBloPoMo thing.  I just wrote an entire post about SNAILS for pete's sake.  I will end this before it goes to a bad place...consider yourselves now schooled on the sex life of a snail.  You're welcome.