ISLAND LIFE

SLIPPERY SUCKERS

It’s a tricky business keeping 100,000 common brown garden snails exactly where they ought to be.

The slippery little suckers could give Houdini a run for his money with their art for escape according to a Tasmanian man who breeds them in his backyard for tucker.

“They just go crazy and find every little space and place they can get into and out of,” says Sandford heliculturalist Alistair Primrose who runs snail farm La Perouse Escargot. “When it’s warm and wet thousands of them were escaping and they move a heck of a lot quicker than we realised they could.”

This former botanist has spent many a two-hour stint in the evenings, stooped over with his head torch beaming, playing hide and catch.

But he hopes those nights are a thing of the past after recently travelling to the Cherasco Worldwide Institute of Snail Breeding in Italy to bring home some special snail netting he says is keeping his snails safely in their pen.

Primrose is one of three Tasmanian snail breeders and says demand for his fattenedup snails is so big he’s struggling to supply the quantities restaurants are asking for.

“So it’s important to keep them safe from predators. Every single one is precious,” he says.

Primrose keeps his snails in four 12m by 4m netted outdoor enclosures made up of Colorbond dug into the ground with shadecloth on top.

As an extra deterrent he’d added copper tape imported from Hong Kong but the clever critters still found a way to get out.

He’s just forked out $15,000 for helitex netting from Italy.

“It’s certainly making a massive difference,” he says.