We have some Brazilian land shells in our garden, and most of
them remain hidden all the time.
Megalobulimus are quite active when the weather is rainy, crawling
among the leaves. They rarely crawl up the walls or trees, but
one of our neighbors called us saying there was an alien from
outer space on his tree....
Our garden needed some cleaning, so Raphael spent one Saturday
removing dead leaves, weeds and dirt, also a dead tree which caused
calluses on his hands after a few hours of digging.
During the process he found several buried eggs, some cracked,
some still with a dead shell inside which probably was not strong
enough to break the egg shell and survive. Among those eggs there
was a huge one, larger than any I've seen before (I wish I'd measured
and photographed it...). I don't know if shells have labor pains
but I think this one did!
I kept all of them in a plastic box on my desk for a few days
since I intended to write a short article about it, especially
showing the one with the dead shell inside.
I came to work on Sunday; the office was very quiet when I start
hearing this low squeaking noise, barely audible. I looked around
thinking "I just had my office sprayed, are there any cockroaches
here?", when I looked inside the plastic box and saw that
egg with a crack and the shell crawling outside!
I was certain nothing would emerge since we had moved the eggs
around, handled them many times and as most people say when you
do this to an egg, it gets spoiled. Well, it didn't!
I even named this one Maggie - full name, Maggie Lo Bulimus (ouch!)
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