I never knew I had it in me to want to end the life of a living thing yet now I found myself developing this insatiable desire to seek out and destroy that which kept coming back to haunt me. I was no longer just satisfied using the kinder gentler approach of running my hand along the surface knocking their bodies off. I had gone completely mad scouring every internal inch of the structure with my fingers reaching into the deep cervices until I could hear the crushing, crackling sounds of their final demise. "Think you got away from me did ya, die, die you little b-tards." Crackle, crackle, crush, crush.
This whole insane madness started a couple of years ago. I would imagine that by now I am responsible for the deaths of a couple thousand of them. I was walking past the aquariums while out shopping one day and noticed they had gotten in black snails. One of my white snails had just passed away so I decided it would be interesting to try out a black snail. I never had a problem with the white snails, they usually live until they get about the size of a half dollar then for whatever reason they die off. Sometimes it takes me a couple days to realize they aren't even alive anymore because they tend to be sort of stationary most the time. I rang the bell to get the attention of a clerk who came over to fetch me a black snail. She's smiling away and tells me here have two. That in itself should have been a huge warning sign something was wrong...whenever does a store just offer you up free stuff out of the blue while looking like you are doing them a huge favor. As the days progressed those two snail turned into two, then three, then four and so forth. I really didn't know what to think about the whole situation at first or how I was going to handle it. I knew I was going to have to come up with a solution because they were beginning to stress out the rest of the aquatic world environment.
Usually when something is wrong with their under water world it comes via the behaviors of the catfish. He's such a little alarmist. If he isn't hiding in his log or dives to get into his log when someone comes near it's usually an indication something is wrong. This past summer my grand kids mom gave me a weird look after stopping abruptly before exiting the house because the catfish was swimming mid aquarium back and forth. I told her I couldn't leave yet because something was wrong. Upon looking the temperature had risen to almost ninety degrees. She inquired on how did I know that and I said by the behavior of the catfish, he never swims mid aquarium. I told how the grand kids had accidentally unplugged the aquarium one weekend and he glued himself to the front of the glass until I noticed. I've had him for a good bit of time, I use to tell everyone if he got much bigger we'd have to throw in a line and have us a catfish dinner...of course out of ear shot of him, no need to create any unnecessary panic for him he does a good enough job doing that on his own. So with him refusing to even go near his log it had me taking a look to see what was up. That's when I realized that with these snails what you see isn't what you get, you get and get and get.
I go online to try and figure out how to get rid of them. After identifying the specific snails I was dealing with it seems like there wasn't no such thing as getting rid of them. The instructions were quite explicit, don't even try because they will just smile at you, they went on to further elaborate that they don't know how snails smile they just know that they do. A total complete tear down of the aquarium would be required. That was going to take a bit on my part because if you've ever had an aquarium it can cost you two, three hundred dollars to set one up. In the mean while I didn't have the heart to just kill them so I'd collect them up a couple times a week and go drop them in the river. I didn't know if they could survive there long term considering the temperature requirements of tropical fish aquariums all I knew was I just didn't have it in me to directly kill them myself.
When I was scouring the internet looking for ways to get rid of them I notice a listing for how to use pea gravel for aquariums. It said you could pick up bags of pea gravel for three, four bucks at a local garden retailer but you had to make sure you washed them thoroughly. I was nervous of what would happen if I didn't get them quite clean enough so I brushed that idea aside. After running to the river a couple times a week I finally caved and bought the pea gravel. I threw out all the existing gravel, threw out the castle, the log and plants. I scrubbed the inside the aquarium thoroughly, washed and rinsed the pea gravel, bought a new pump, new log and plants. It was done, it was over with, finally the nightmare had ended.
About a month later while laying on the couch I thought I had seen something tiny and dark moving about. I guess I wanted to be in denial more then I wanted to check because I refused to acknowledge I seen any such thing. Finally I go over to take a look. I was like see there is nothing there, it was all in your mind. A couple days later I see it again but this time I get up right away and look and sure as be there was a small black snail. I reach in, grab him, apologize to him before whipping him in the trash. All is good for another couple weeks when I see something moving again. This time I take a deeper look, I remove the log to find about half a dozen others hidden there. I was how could this even be, even if just one got by how could it produce others. I dig further on the internet and find that some snails are asexual, meaning they don't have to have a partner to mate. I was disheartened to say the least. I figured the problem wasn't to far gone yet, if I stayed vigilant maybe I could end up getting them all. It was winter time now and I wasn't about to run them down to the river so I just gently bumped them off everything and tried my hardest to pry them out of the nooks and crannies to get them out, bag them up and throw them in the trash. The site said it wasn't unusual for snails to escape aquariums and survive in your house, which when pictured in your mind in comparison to how they take over the an aquarium is a nightmare unto itself meant making sure to dispose of them in something that sealed tightly. I just couldn't imagine how one even slipped by when someone mentioned that maybe a small one had attached itself under the lip of the plastic at the top of the aquarium. This time I decided I would just buy another aquarium also, I am sure my cat fish and frog wouldn't mind the additional room but that endeavor would require also buying another stand to hold the additional weight, a larger hood, pump, etc.
It's been about three months or so trying to acquire all the things needed, I've even found a rather large doom my frog may lay atop or hide in. I hope this will finally end up being the end of my nightmare. Every week that goes by I find myself becoming increasingly inpatient as their population grows out of control. I feel like the Negan of the aquatic world, I no longer had the patience to gently nudge them out of hiding, I just want to crush them into tiny bits with the no guilt ease you see of those on the walking dead taking out a walker. I am hoping that this will be the end to my quandary, my nightmare, my thirst for the kill of the hunt. I can only imagine laying on the psychologist's couch trying to explain how I know this usually starts out at a young age with puppies or kittens but one day I happened to be passing by some aquariums.....