What is the slowest moving thing on earth? That was the question. Slightly different, of course, from ‘to be or not to be’, which was also a question if one can recall Shakespeare and Hamlet. [That famous quote went through several comical incarnations as more lowly poets, leaning heavily on the pun for fun, played around with the dilemma, as in, ‘tubby or not tubby?’]

That said, the answer to the first question, isn’t the tortoise, or the snail, as it turns out, or even the sloth — the world’s slowest mammal — which was most respondents’ third guess. Which is pretty forgivable really, because nearly all of us have been conditioned by the language spoken around us, and often slow-movers have been referred to as tortoises or snails (yours truly has been cast in that category from day one and endured many years of silent embarrassment at being surpassed by all and sundry until a reading of the great literary giant Iris Murdoch provided a comforting quote. Murdoch said, ‘In philosophy if you aren’t moving at a snail’s pace you aren’t moving at all’. Granted, Murdoch was talking philosophy but philosophy is life, isn’t it? And so is ‘to be’. Therefore, living the life of a snail made much more sense, in a comforting way at least.)

But back from that digression: it turns out that Mr Sloth can travel at 0.1 mph! The garden snail can reach 0.3 mph. And while our fingernails and toenails aren’t living things, just like glaciers and tectonic plates, they all grow or move at vastly slower rates. But apparently, the slowest moving thing on earth has been found, according to a BBC video, to be pitch — that sticky black substance also known as asphalt or bitumen, which at room temperature may appear to be a solid but is actually a liquid which, via an experiment, was shown to have taken 69 years before scientists could catch the first drop of a clump of pitch as it emerged down the tube of a funnel.

Mystery

We need to return to the snail, however. It is legendary for being a garden pest, in collusion with that other menace, the slug. Where or when or how they suddenly appear is sometimes a mystery but one moment the garden is doing exceedingly well, thank you very much; the next, it has been overrun by an army of snails, sliding along their slime trails in search of the nearest green leaf.

Last summer’s basil was decimated overnight, gone, devoured at a midnight snail banquet when the basil-tenders slept peacefully through the night envisioning superior flavoured pasta as soon as the baby leaves became a little more mature! Not to be.

Anyhow, another article that I came across recently states that a survey on house gardeners revealed that a high percentage — seventy per cent — of them happily toss snails over their neighbours’ fences. Now there’s good neighbourliness for you!

The same people you nod and smile at and exchange a pleasantry or two with on the sidewalk, when crouched low behind their colour bond fences engage in the act of tossing you a snail. Only, this is not anything new.

The act of discreet snail-tossing has apparently been going on for decades, maybe even centuries. Michael. S., a seasoned gardener who offers me tips, says he wised up to his neighbour’s antics only after he started painstakingly putting markings on the shells of snails in his garden. He would then get rid of them. Within a few days, lo and behold, an entire batch of unmarked ones would appear, all near the fence border. These he’d mark once more and toss back over the fence only to find the next day the very same marked ones back in his yard. The Snail Games. Sounds like a Hollywood film based on a true story. For the snails, though, that moment in flight when they soar over the fence must be the headiest feeling a snail is ever likely to have.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Aystralia.