Snail Completes Six-Metre Crossing, Declines to Comment

A garden snail has completed an unbroken six-metre crossing of a flagstone path in a suburban back garden, reaching the flowerbed on the far side at approximately ten to four on Thursday morning. The crossing began on Sunday.

The route was chosen for cover, not for speed, the snail said. Roughly sixteen hours of the journey were spent stationary beneath a fallen hosta leaf, an interval the snail described as scheduled rather than lost. Conditions on Monday were, in its words, aggressively dry. Two flagstones were crossed twice, owing to a navigational decision the snail declined to characterise as an error.

A blackbird present for much of the crossing described the pace as provocative. The snail declined to respond directly, noting only that the blackbird had crossed the same path eleven times during the same period, and had on each occasion been going somewhere else. The blackbird did not respond to a request for further comment, having left to do something else.

Asked whether the return leg would be attempted, the snail said it would begin when conditions were right, and that anyone intending to watch should bring something to sit on. It then withdrew into its shell, which the assembled woodlice took as the end of the interview. The flowerbed was reached at 3:52 in the morning and has not been left since. A second snail already at the flowerbed offered no comment either, and the two have since been described as unavailable.