shopping for snails

mm-hmmm. random as hell, ain't it?

the kid plopped herself into the passenger seat after school and announced "i need to bring five snails to science class tomorrow for extra credit."

a-whaaaa?

"i can get an extra 20 points towards my overall grade, mom."

and with her current grade in that particular class, she needs all the extra credit she can get. but i haven't seen a single snail since we moved into this house. boo.

so i swung a left turn into our little "downtown" area towards the local pet store and shooed her out to find out if we could get them there. while she was in the store, i flipped through the navigation to find more local pet stores and managed to call two before she came back empty-handed. but one of the shops i called said "did you call before? because i had someone else who called looking for snails for a science project." heh.

so after her tutoring session, we headed straight to this shop and were disappointed to find that what they had were teeny-tiny snails. "they don't even look like they've hatched yet, mom." i have no idea as to whether snails "hatch" or not, but we left and headed home to see if there might be some in our back yard.

and of course, nothing. so the kid whipped out the yellow pages and started calling around. after trying a couple more mom-and-pop shops, she tried petsmart and voila! snails for $1.49 apiece. yay.

we walked in and headed straight for the fish section - and stood in line behind a dude who was buying a bag full of crickets to feed his...something. hell, i don't know what he was taking them home to. the kid and i were both freaking out and gagging over his nasty ass purchase. ew.

and then when we told the lady why we were there, she gave a giant sigh and said "ugh. another one??"

the kid and i exchanged our special "WTF?" look.

she looked at us and said "oh, it's not your fault, but i've had a couple of kids come in looking for snails for a class project and they had absolutely no idea what they needed, or what they were going to use them for. and one of them said they thought they were going to dissect them! i'm not exactly an animal activist, but even snails are living things, and they deserve some respect."

and on and on and on, until she finally asked us how many we needed and disappeared behind a door in search of a container to put them in. sheesh. i felt like we'd just walked into a PETA meeting wearing fur or something. well, okay, that's a little extreme, but hell, woman, i just want to get my kid some fucking extra credit points! is that okay with you, for the love of poo??

and then we had arby's for dinner. the end.