Snails of a Talus Field

By Lucy Herring

We arrived at Moose Bend Rock Creek at 11:00 am in the subaru. Dottie, Mama, Papa and I all stare at the mountain we are going to climb. I look at the river and groan. I know the mountain is going to be very steep and tough to climb because I have little legs, Dottie chuckles.    

Crossing the river I’m shivering but I know I’ll want to be swimming while on the mountain.  Once we cross the river we switch shoes and hide them (we don’t want to hike in wet shoes or have someone steal our shoes). After that we walk through thistles and jump over logs. Past the thistles and logs the mountain gets steeper. Sadly we can’t find the trail, it is nowhere in sight. I feel annoyed because it means we have to bushwhack and I will get painful scratches.

All of a sudden mom tells me to get down, then she tells me that Dottie and Papa spotted a grouse! While chasing the grouse up a talus field I notice three strangely shaped rocks at least that’s what I thought they were. Then I picked them up and noticed they were snail shells! I wonder if the grouse ate the snails, if so did they keep eating them or did they just stop? Did a bird put them on the rock and then eat them? If so, do they taste good? I stuffed them in my pocket and caught up to mom.             

Then Papa screams “I found the trail!”  We all rush up to Papa and the trail.  Once we get there we devour a rewarding melted Snickers bar.  

We walk farther up the trail and Mom tells me to get down again. I know what that means!  It means someone sees a grouse.  I hear two loud BANGS!  Then Dottie goes to grab the grouse hurtling down the mountain.  Papa sends me up to look for the other grouse. I am worried that the grouse will fly at my face and hurt me. I notice some movement and look in that area. I find the “dead” grouse, I go to pick it up and all of a sudden it opens its eyes!  It’s not dead!  I jump back and am scared that I’m going to fall down the mountain.  Mom tells me to get back and Papa comes over and whacks the grouse with a big stick. I am proud because I climbed a big mountain and we worked together to shoot two grouse on the first day of the grouse season!

After a few days of research the snail shells I found end up being Rocky Mountain Snails! The snail shells were extremely large and they had a big spiral in the middle. I searched Montana.gov Rocky mountain snails and I wrote the snails kingdom, phylum, class, order, famly, genus, and species for my homeschool science project.  One thing I learned is that rocky mountain snails only come out when it is rainy or cold, when it is hot the snails hibernate! I felt very excited and surprised because I haven’t met anyone who found a snail shell on a mountain talus field.