Field guide No. 1245
Two snails, one shared shell
A tight fit for two.
A pair of snails crawls across a greenhouse bench from opposite ends of one large spiral shell, among clay pots and soil. They have agreed to disagree about direction.
Field noteTwo snails crawl out of opposite ends of one shell. One body, two bodies; the picture cannot have both counts.
- Specimen
- No. 1245
- Genus
- Generated
- Kind
- Impossible (the round square kind)
- Breaks
- Category
- Where it doesn’t exist
- Greenhouse benches, where one shell has one snail
- Nearest existing relative
- a garden snail on a clay pot.
- Filed in Fresh slop as
- Surreal
Also impossible, also breaking category
Borrowed backboneA slug carries an exposed spine. The loan is secured against next year’s mucus.
An honest reflectionA mirror showing somewhere else is a mirror and a window at once. Mud on the sink takes the window’s side.
A fused wing of starlingsFlocks are many birds keeping apart. Here they are one bird and many at once, sharing a single wing.
The tidal channel’s shed skinWater keeps no skin to shed. This channel peeled off a clear one, every ripple kept, and moved over.