Snails

There are a lot of snails in Tartu. There’s even a spiraly tower called Tigutorn (snail tower). It’s super tall and has neat rows of windows different shapes and sizes. When I asked Hugo (age 6) to draw something on my poster about Tartu, he drew Tigutorn. His mother said that Tigutorn is very important to him, and that he’d like to visit it someday. 

I remember walking along a boring road on the outskirts of town with Krraka, who led me through some tall grass toward a pond. It was summertime and the sun was setting so it was probably around half past 1 am. We didn’t make it to the edge of the pond because we could hear the crunching of all the snails we were massacring with every step, so we turned back.

I laughed harder than I had in a long time at Kalevi’s garden party when I was playing with some kids and we found snails. One hilarious little girl picked one up, turned it to look at the gooey side, then suddenly started this strange high-pitched squealing at it, “Yee oh woowoo weeee oooo eee oh weee!” She shrieked at the goo, wobbling her head for emphasis. I laughed so hard. Later I found her with a strip of bark and seven snails on it. She sat watching them and would poke them back into their shells if they tried to peek out.

Katrin mentioned that hedgehogs are good for her garden because they eat snails, which destroy her plants. We spotted a couple of hedgehogs one morning and I got some good pictures, because they don’t run at all. Apparently they can jump at you very suddenly with their spikes aimed appropriately, though.

I tried to take a close-up picture of a snail along the Emajõgi but it came out blurry. One thing I like about Estonian language is that they have a special word/preposition for being by water, like a specific ‘by’ for water - ääres. 

One of our professors asked that we come up with our spirit animal. When I thought really hard about it, I realized that I have a different spirit animal in Tartu than back home. In Tartu, my spirit animal is a snail. I don’t know what it was in the U.S., but something that moves a little faster, and probably a vertebrate.