Orkney Image Library

Found one stuck to the gargae door. Are snails in shells common in Orkney, as it was the 1st I had come across one.

Crunch!!!

They certainly seem to be getting more common. It's a real nuisance when you unwittingly stand on one in the dark and carry the mess into the house. :o(

Blasted things are common out at the back o' my house, that's for sure! At least, they're common until I (I hasten to add, accidentally) stand on them... then, crunch, indeed!

There seems to have been an explosion of snails this past two or three years. My garden is full of them, brown, striped and yellow ones.

Robert Rendall in "Orkney Shore" writes that he first knew of the garden snail in Orkney in the Albert Street garden of a baker called James Milne. It was thought to have arrived in the first two decades of the 20th century on a cargo of wood delivered to Peace's Woodyard (the present Post Office) which adjoined the garden. It then colonised other gardens in Kirkwall and spread to the countryside too. The shell on this one looks different, or is it just a young one?

They are everywhere including in the streets of Kirkwall. I have to weave around them with my wheelchair as they tend to crunch and explode when the chair's tyres run over them. There was a huge explosion of them last summer in the garden and the same this year.

I certainly love looking at them then returning them to their habitat