"Dick Chambers" wrote in message
...
I have lived in the same house in Leeds for the last 33 years. During the
first 27 (approximately) of these years, I hardly ever saw a snail,
although
I did have a large number of slugs. During the last 6 (approx) years,
there
has been a dramatic increase in the number of snails. On a wet evening
after
dark, if I go to post a letter in the local mail box, my feet
inadvertently
crunch a snail every tenth step, on average. I have just removed and
killed
about 50 of them from my bed of petunias, the bed being a mere 5 square
metres in area. The snails are thick on the ground. It ihas reached the
point where I would describe it as a plague.

Last night I went to a neighbour's house, three doors away. When I returned
home at 9.55 it had been raining and the pavement in front of her house and
her neighbour's were heavily populated by snails and slugs. The pavement in
front of the next house and ours were empty of them.

Now that IS a strange phenomenon.

Mary