Every Time I Stand On A Snail And Crush It I Get Upset

[KinderChocolate]

I go out for walks with my mum and dad a lot and we often go in the fields. Lots of times, I've felt myself standing on a snail, and I hear a crushing noise under my feet and I look down and see that I've crushed a snail. Every time I do that I feel upset. I haven't done it recently because you don't see snails in winter but I do it in spring and summer, but I'm thinking about it at the moment, and thinking about it is making me cry. I know I'm going to keep doing it. How can I not be upset about it?

There's probably a high likelihood that it was going to be eaten by a bird or a hedgehog or something anyway. At least it had a quick death.

I don't think you can. I feel sad too. I just apologise to them and put it out my mind - so maybe not as sad as you.

I remind myself that birds and other creatures need their food and figure it will make a good snack for something.

When I was little my mum told me that when a snail breaks its shell it can live as a slug instead, which was a story I quite liked to make me feel less sad.

I sometimes stand on them on my front path and I get a bit upset too.

It goes to snail heaven and lives with it’s snail ancestors, eating succulent leaves for eternity.

Yea always feel sad too and say sorry but then I remember how many snails mumsnet gardeners kill and how it will be a meal for bird or badger.

Try not to be too upset about it, you're not doing it deliberately. In my own case, my sympathy for such molluscs was permanently dented in the summer, when I trod on a slug on the patio in my bare feet. That was upsetting.

Hostas and newly sprouting beans, surely?

Yes, I feel awful when i hear that crunch. Snail was just minding it's own business and I crushed it.

I like to think of how when we humans have totally mucked up the world and gone extinct, the snails and slugs will be the ones that carry on regardless and evolve into some wondrous new creature that can run the world in our place. They really have their shit together those slugs and snails.

I mean sometimes we do stand on one, but there about 90 million billion others in the queue.

It sounds like a harrowing and traumatising experience. I suggest you book an appointment with a psychologist as soon as possible.

Yeah, I've done that before, it's not nice, but just one of those things. Imagine how many ants/spiders/flies you kill by stepping on them or driving over/into them.

You just can't think about things like that.

Be a good person whenever you can, chill about what you can't control.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=n2pTfLLqVYc

Vogons? 😬

Same OP. If it helps I always save anything on the pavement by moving it to a hedge in the hope no one else steps on it. Protected a huge stag beetle next to dad's primary one day and a dad actually stopped and said how thoughtful it was (I was feeling a bit weird trying to get it onto a leaf while adults looked at me like a freak!). I like to imagine it makes up for the accidental squashes...

Same here. It’s a little life that’s just been crushed and I don’t know how long it takes them to die.