Blog

You are currently viewing Meet Bernard..

Meet Bernard..

Meet Bernard, our temporary house guest.
I found him on the path in full sunshine.
His shell was shattered with a huge section missing, but in just a few weeks he’s managed to repair it really well. Another couple of weeks and he will be well enough to be released somewhere safe!

Amazing facts you may not know about snails –
-Snails and slugs eat with a jaw and a flexible band of thousands of microscopic teeth, called a radula. The radula scrapes up, or rasps, food particles and the jaw cuts off larger pieces of food, like a leaf, to be rasped by the radula.
-Snails can crawl along the edge of a razorblade and not be hurt, thanks to the thick slime that they produce.
-Snails move by gliding along on a muscular foot. The foot is covered with the epithelium cilia. Successive waves of muscular contraction travel down the ventral of the foot helping the snail move.
-Garden snails have both female and male reproductive cells (they are hermaphrodite). They don’t actually need to mate with another snail in order to reproduce – self fertilisation is possible. After mating they lay around 80 white eggs in a damp, underground nest.
-Some species of snail can live for up to 25 years in the wild!
-Land snails play a vital role in the ecosystem. They help to recycle nutrients and move spores of fungi and other organisms to new locations.
-Snails are an important food source for many creatures.
 
We’ve also been excited to discover we have another guest….somewhere!

After finding hedgehog poo in the garden, we know we have a spiky new visitor, but we haven’t actually seen him yet!

I decided to made a new ring in honour of both of our new additions.

‘Meet At Midnight’ is entirely handmade from multiple layers of meticulously hand pierced sterling silver.  Every element is hand engraved, from the snail’s shell and hedgehog’s spines, to each and every blade of grass.
A glittery Blue Goldstone sits centrepiece, which sparkles like a midnight sky full of stars.