From The New York Times:
EVEN if you love eating snails, it is possible that you have never given much thought to the way they live.
Maybe you assume that they are weak and slow, enduring lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau once described the bulk of humanity. If so, Mary Stewart, a snail rancher whose mollusks are sought after by top chefs all over the country (including Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller), will not hesitate to set you straight.
“They are the loudest, noisiest munchers you’ve ever heard,” she said on a hot Central Valley morning, smoking a cigarette in a small air-conditioned room attached to a farm stand a few steps from her house.
