I was walking my dog this morning, and I noticed there were so many snails on the sidewalks that I actually had to keep breaking my stride to sidestep them (I hate the crunching of snail shells under my feet – I guess I’m just strange like that).
Now my dog, on the other hand, who wasn’t paying the slightest attention, never once crushed a snail under her giant paws. And never broke her stride!
Now I have always considered my dog to be a big lumbering beast. She knocks glasses of water (or worse) off the coffee table with the sweep of an enthusiastic tail wag, she can shove an entire pile of clean laundry off the bed just turning around to make herself comfortable, and she’s whacked her head into the wall in her excitement to go walking in the morning and has literally knocked me over when I go to let her out.
HOW is it that such a clumsy beast never, EVER, once, crushed a snail beneath her feet on our morning walk?
Maybe it’s because she’s happy (all the time). Maybe it’s because she gets a better night’s sleep than I do. Maybe it’s because she eats healthier than I do. Or maybe she just doesn’t see herself apart from the natural world like I know I do.
I know when babies are teeny they believe they are just extensions of their mamas. Maybe all animals feel this way… they are extensions of their earth.
At some point we come to believe that because we walk and move on our own, we must be separate.
That’s why, if we walk early in the morning, we have to worry about crushing snails!
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