martes, 05 de marzo de 2019

Why I’m the way I am!

Growing up in San Francisco, surrounded by asphalt and concrete, I was always drawn towards natural history. Always exploring the undisturbed natural pockets within the city looking for new bugs and critters to identify. I volunteered every Saturday in my early adolescent years at the Academy of Sciences working in the aquatics and herpetology departments. This gave me access to the academy’s wonderful reference library, which I often used.

I moved up to Sonoma County in the late seventies when I was an older teenager. I was truly enthralled to explore the entire west county as my new playground discovering new critters almost every day.

In 1978 at the age of 16, I was exploring the flora and fauna on one of my friend’s property who happened to have a Redwood grove, creek and a ravine on the piece of land. It was a sunny day after a recent rainstorm. I was walking along the trail and I was dumbstruck when I saw the most beautiful snail crawling along a green, moss-laden branch. It was a large, mature Monadenia infumata snail fully extended gliding along his mossy trail. He had the brightest brick red body, which contrasted with his dark, almost mat black shell and the bright green moss beneath him.

This was the exact moment that I was bit by the “Snail Bug”. Prior I had only been exposed to the common and introduced land snails found in the city. I wanted to learn more about this wonderful snail and discover what other native land mollusks lived in the area as well.

Forty plus years later I’m still that 16 year-old kid at heart, looking beneath logs, rocks and leaf litter piles for new mollusks to identify. I don’t see that ever changing!

Publicado el martes, 05 de marzo de 2019 a las 12:18 AM por tlawson tlawson | 1 comentario | Deja un comentario

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