Celebrate Family-Friendly Escargot Day

Sunday, believe it or not, is National Escargot Day. No kidding. It’s designed to open more people to eating the French delicacy. We’ve actually fed it to our so before and he was fine with it. I’m not sure I explained to him that he was eating snails. Though, he’d probably find that more amusing than disgusting.

Celebrate National Escargot Day - Eat More Snails

Since my favorite French restaurants are closed on Sundays, and I’m not up for making my own escargot for Family Fun Food Night, I thought I’d use this holiday to share some interesting snail facts. With any luck, we’ll find one in our garden this weekend. We won’t eat him, though. I promise.

So here are your snail facts, courtesy of GeoCities.com, which are sure to help stir up your appetite:

• The largest land snail ever found was 15 inches long and weighed 2 pounds

• Snails’ bodies produce a thick slime. Because of this slime, they can crawl across the edge of a razor and not get hurt. (Now that’s appetizing.)

• Some snails have been known to live up to 15 years.

• Snails are hermaphrodites, which means that they have both male and female reproductive organs.

• Snails can retract one or both of their tentacles at a time.

• Because of the suction created by their slime, a snail can crawl upside down.

• Garden Snails mainly eat garden plants and vegetables, but they will also eat decaying plants and soil.

• The fastest snails are the speckled garden snails which can move up to 55 yards per hour compared 23 inches per hour of most other land snails.

• Garden snails hibernate during the winter and live on their stored fat.

• Garden snails evolved from sea snails about 600 million years ago.

Photo, Flickr, Hamed Saber