It it had been a very long time since I had seen a snail in its shell slowly edging his ( her?) way along.  I remember seeing these guys when I was a child.  Odd that we tolerated snails and even admired their horns poking out of the shell, but poor slugs were despised and I would run to get salt from my grandmother and I would pour salt on the slug and watch it writhe and die in agony.  Why salt killed them so well and so quickly is a mystery to me.  That was the end of him nibbling on the cabbage leaves.  My grandmother called them leather jackets which was another mystery.  Our snails were larger than the one I saw yesterday and their shells were of different colors.  This snail was struggling on the concrete paving stone and I couldn’t imagine how he would get over the stone edging so I decided to put him in the soft mulch and leaves of the rather neglected bed beside the path.  I knew he would draw in his horns and his head and tail to protect himself.  I was surprised at how quickly he did that, and there in a moment he was safe in the cool garden.  I liked that snail and I liked that he was wandering around my garden.