Let Me Tell You About the Snails

An Epic Saga in Several Parts

Photo by Reuben Teo on Unsplash

First: a little history.

My husband and I live on an island, an hour’s ferry-ride from the mainland, in far northwestern Washington state. Almost Canada. In fact, we can see Canada from here — in several directions. (We can’t see Russia, though. That’s someone else.)

It’s a small island, a lovely island, with many amenities: a mainstream grocery store and a marvelous co-op and a mini-mart; far too many fine restaurants (we’re a tourist destination in the warmer seasons) and a bakery and a chocolate shop and several places to get ice cream; a great library and a fantastic bookstore; excellent venues for music and art and theatre; a hardware store for serious country folk (with lumber and feed and big machinery) and a separate hardware store for transplanted city folk like us (with ceramic pots and Christmas decorations); a brewery and a cider-maker and a winery or two; clothing stores and art galleries and antique stores and an old-fashioned barbershop and places to rent kayaks; even a marvelous movie theater that plays nearly-first-run movies (one per week, two showings: that’s all you need!). Oh, and Oprah.

But our island does not have a tropical fish store.

We moved here from Portland, Oregon. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Portland had many marvelous…