The old rhyme says that little boys are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. I understood the puppy dog tail part. Although I only have girls, I teach at religious school and know just how much wiggling little boys can do. As for the snips, I�ve always assumed that it referred to that habit they have of stuffing all sorts of odds and ends into their pockets. I did not understand about the snails, though, until the Great Snail Fiasco.

Day-Hay has a fish tank. She has Danios, White Clouds, Albino Coricats, Sunburst Plaides, and a bully of a Chinese Algae Eater in a fifteen gallon tank. She takes very good care of those fish. She remembers to feed them (which is more than I can say for Kat about the birds), cleans the tank, and checks on their health. She converses with the fish store guy about any possible disease she is seeing. She even removes any fish that die all by herself as quickly as possible so that they do not infect or harm other fish.

Everything was going swimmingly�until one of her best friends offered to give her a few snails. Day-Hay thought it over for a while. She consulted with Mr. Philately. She did not make a rash decision. She simply made a wrong decision. Live and learn, I suppose, but what a lesson.

There is no such thing as a few snails. For that matter, there is no such thing as two snails. Snails are more prolific than rabbits. As near as I can tell, if you have two snails one day, you have sixty snails the next.

Day-Hay valiantly tried to cope. She reminded me of hapless Mickey Mouse in Fantasia. The more he tried to stop the brooms from bringing water, the more brooms he had bringing water. Day-Hay had a similar problem.

At first, she tried removing the excess snails from the tank. She couldn�t bear to kill them so she took them to the creek or out into the rainwater ditch. She would think she had them all and then, the next day, there would be more than she started with. Every day she was removing snails and every day she had more.

She enlisted Mr. Philately�s help for a more radical solution. They removed all the plastic plants, gravel, and wood pieces from the tank and microwaved them. They scrubbed every surface in the tank. They cleaned everything�or so they thought. After a lot of work, they admired how their persistence had paid off. The tank looked snail-free.

But they celebrated too soon. From quarters unknown, first there were a few snails and then more. Soon they were right back where they started from.

So, last week, they began what they hope will be the ultimate solution. It�s been a major job and one Danio has fallen victim to the process but, after giving that Danio a proper, fully-flushed funeral, they are pressing on. They began by transferring all the fish and some of the water into a smaller tank that belongs to a friend. They then cleaned and dried the big tank thoroughly. They bought new little rocks and plants and a big rock. They even bought a new filter on the off-chance that the snail eggs were hiding in the filter. They let the tank dry for a week and then, yesterday, they transferred the surviving Danios and the White Clouds to the new tank with new water to begin the ammonia cycle. (Danios and White Clouds are ammonia-resistant and their presence will prepare the water for the other fish.) Keep your fingers crossed that the whole thing works.

But, anyway, now I know about the snail part of little boys. No, little boys do not reproduce like snails exactly. They leave that to some responsible and irresponsible elders. No, it�s the way that they persistently are everywhere and all over even when you thought you sent them off. It�s the hiding in unknown places and then jumping out. That�s why little boys are made of snails.

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