Slow Passion

Product Description

When BBC Radio 4's Material World programme announced a search for the UK's top amateur scientist little did anyone expect that the winning experiment would comprise one of our humblest garden pests. Ruth Brooks posed this question: Do snails have a homing instinct? The nation was gripped by the unexpected thesis & by Ruth's online diaries which catalogued her trials & tribulations as she got to grips with these slimy little gastropods. A Slow Passion is Ruth's story with anecdotes & misadventures galore. What starts out as a ruthless vendetta against the snails that are decimating her hostas becomes a journey of discovery into the whys & wherefores of snail life. When Ruth dumps a group of the worst offending snails in a far-off wood she decides to paint their shells with nail varnish just to see what happens. & guess what they come back home. This is the beginning of an obsession that sees the grandmother-turned-scientist prowling about & pouncing on the snails in her garden sneaking off on night-time missions to repatriate bucketloads of painted snails reading up on the sex-life of snails (which turns out to be unexpectedly romantic) & eventually sending off the application to a national competition for home science. With charming illustrations A Slow Passion is a sweet funny & surprising investigation into the hidden life of snails which will change the way you look at the smaller (and slower) things in life.