Dead things are disgusting.

My little sister shot a turkey this weekend. While this picture was not as entertaining or bloody as the one when she shot a deer (see November post, 'My Rant'), it is still exciting for her. It's her first one.


I, on the other hand, would not be a good hunter. At all. Namely, dead things disgust me. I'll hold a frog or toad all day. The second it's dead (particularly the ones that used to float in my parents' pool after reaching a chlorinated drowning)- you can't offer me enough money to touch it. Sick. Dead things are totally sick.

So tonight, I went to the pet store to buy 12 snails so that I can put them in my students' ecosystems at school. This lady is trying to fish them out for me and is small talking with me about if I'm paying for this myself because she used to work for retired teachers and teachers have to pay for everything themselves, etc, etc. (Which is true, but not the point of this story.) She was really nice, but I lied to her and said I WAS paying for it myself (which I sort of was... but then I was getting reimbursed) because I thought maybe she'd give me a discount. She didn't. That's ok though. I lied.

ANYWAY, she's scooping these snails out and holding them up to her nose and smelling them. And then, as she's setting them into the water filled baggie, one of them FALLS OUT OF ITS SHELL. Puke is coming up just thinking about it. It looks like a revolting, huge, wad of snot. And it starts floating in the bag. So I go, "Um... I think that one is dead." And she says, "Oh you're right. Man. Something about our water keeps killing these snails. City water, you know. And snails smell God-awful when they die!" Then she reaches her hand into the bag and I think, "Seriously, if she picks out that nauseating snail carcass I'm going to puke all over the place." Thankfully, she just gets the other live one out of the bag and then throws the water and dead thing out in the sink.

From here, she scoops up like, 10 other snails and they are ALL DEAD. They fall out on the table. They fall out in the net. One falls out IN THE WATER and gets caught in the mini jet stream of the air filter thing and starts chasing the fish, who swim away from it lightening fast which is exactly what I would do if I were a fish and a huge, slimy, shapeless form was rushing towards me. At this point, I'm just thinking "Need to leave. Need to leave. Need to leave." But she manages to scoop two live ones out of- no exaggeration- about 15 snails who are all DEAD. I didn't want these two snails, but after lying to her and then making her touch all those dead things, I felt kind of like I owed it to her. Right now, they are sitting in a baggie next to my school briefcase. I'm not looking at them. I'm taking them to school tomorrow and giving them to another teacher who is doing the ecosystems. I don't care if they are alive. I'm done with snails for a while. Nasty.