BANG! The entire Tank shook, and everyone tumbled down towards my end of the Tank. Wonderful. Another morning, rudely started by the unpleasant ruckus of Walden the Giant Pink Fish and his cronies. Ok, so we might be the size of your average ravioli but we are proud to be of the Gastropod Class (fancy term for the class of snails and such, and I have a feeling that didn’t mean much to Walden) The only thing that separated us from the evil wrath of Walden (ok, may be that’s exaggerating; from the loud and chaotic wrath of Walden) was the barrier of our plastic little Tank within a humungous glass tank.
Now before we move on, let me explain a few things. I am a snail called Mac with lots of experience with dim-witted fish like Walden and I live in the slow-life Tank with a dozen or so of my relatives. Our Tank is within Waldens’ massive, bubbling, ominous, tank. It reminded me of the very bottom of the sea. Waldens’ tank was within a store.
Our Tank is quite plain and without decoration except for the usual clumps of algae. It had an annoying habit of sliding off the designated rock in Waldens’ tank, even after one of the humans fixed it. At the moment, it was laying at a 45° angle and I happened to be at the very end. It came to be a favorite target of Waldens’ pranks and such. My family and I lived in a corner of the tank. As there were only four of us: my parents, my sister, Mildred, and me, it wasn’t too crowded. I spent most of my days in that corner, observing the usual buzz and hum of activity through the glass of the Tank. On occasion, I would slide along to Cheeses’ corner or gobble algae off the walls. In short, my life in the Tank was without much excitement but it beat being out there with Walden and his cronies.
Using my English skills (don’t ask), I managed to read a bit about my exterior surroundings in a brochure lying in front of the Tank: it seemed to be called PetSmart... PetSmart? I know only the Atlantic and the Pacific. They sold animals. Lots of animals. There were dogs, birds, mice and even a chinchilla that knew sign language. That was all I could figure out from the brochure. So as far as I was concerned, I was stuck in the Tank for the remainder of my days unless some human(s) came and “adopted me”. Seems my future holds lovely prospects.
I have only two friends: Cheese, my distant cousin; a much smaller, shyer and at times, much smarter snail. She tends to stay away from the other snails. Cheese always told me that she wanted to find adventure out side of the algae-covered Tank. My second friend happens to be the sign-language chinchilla. How I figured out English and sign language, and how he figured out sign language and English will forever be left mysteries to be solved by high-tech jumbo. He prefers to be called Mr. Rodrick the Chinchilla. In the recent past, his companion Benji was adopted. Rodrick tried to forget about it. The only times I got to see him were Sundays during tank/cage cleaning time. It was these two animals that I had for any sort of accompaniment.

As I was saying, Walden and his cronies were giving us the usual morning wake-up call and I was attempting to avoid suffocation from under the shells of my family and relatives. Through a crack in the mess of shells, I noticed that it was a sunny day in the Tank and the humans were coming in steadily. From across the aisle, I saw a few fat humans (who looked distinctly like Walden) admiring the ‘glo’ fish. At the sales table, a uniformed human scooped a few ill-fated, noisy crickets into a bowl. Then suddenly, a humongous form loomed in front of our tank. Everyone started screaming their shells off. “It’s just a human!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. But nobody even turned an antennae toward me. Oh sure, ignore the abnormally large-shelled snail in the corner. Then, a large fleshy human limb with five smaller limbs on the end of some sort reached into our tank and propped our tank back up on the rock. Walden bobbed up and down in the corner with a mischievous grin on his distorted face. Some day, I would come flying out of the Tank and give that bully a good hit in that face of his that looks like it’s been chasing anchored boats. As soon as everyone calmed down, the limb came down AGAIN. The limb was further attached to human who, I think sold animals. Above us, he began speaking to two other humans. Then came the dreaded (cue scary music)… fish net. Everyone scrambled as fast they could slide away from the green horror that they called a “net”. The generations of snails who came before us all faced the “net”. Now, see here: I’m no coward, but when it comes to the net I’m breaking the record for the fastest fleeing snail in the deep blue tank. But my skills failed me today, and so did Cheeses’. The net came down upon us both, and the last thing I heard were the cries of my family that I would never see again.