because we need more boys, of course!

No proper, loving, nurturing parent wants a child's pets to die, of course, even when they are snails. But sometimes the same proper, loving, nurturing parent may not particularly care whether the pets in question live or not.  There is a difference. 

So maybe we can forgive this proper? loving? nurturing? parent (though she has never consciously claimed any of those adjectives) that she has not lately inquired about the health and happiness of The Snails, and that she has actually secretly assumed them either deceased or fortunate escapees from their salad-container home. 

But...

But...

BUT.

Big was this parent's surprise to learn that the snails have somehow miraculously survived their contained existence. Furthermore, the discovery was made that we will soon have the privilege of receiving into our fold cute little BABY snails!:-O

You got to be kidding. Those little white objects are surely pebbles. Neels, you did decorate their home with pebbles, didn't you?

Nope.

On closer examination (during which uno unfortunate embryo gave his life in order to prove his existence) it was confirmed: thirty-something baby gastropods are just waiting to hatch and meet their beaming owner. "I am so proud of them!" he chortled in his joy. "I did not know I could make them do this!" 

The proper, loving, nurturing parent did not burst his bubble by telling him that he indeed did not make them do this. She just smiled an outward smile and freaked out inwardly as she envisioned the future with thirty more snails to keep out of the house to love on. That would be thirty baby BOY snails, for that is what their proud owner emphatically   insists they are. :-0 Big proper, loving, nurturing parental sigh...

Update: I apparently had it all wrong. "Not all boy snails," he corrected me, "there is at least one girl in there - so that they can keep making more and more and more baby snails, you know!"

Oh of course!  Just what we need.:-/