web analytics

2/2/2022

Joop died. We found out late at night. We are devastated.

He had been unwell recently and received a course of antibiotic injections at the vet. He seemed to be getting better for a while, but then some flesh literally fell off his body and into his tank. The vet thought he was fine, that he got rid of the old tissue for a reason and that he needed to sleep and heal. So we let him. He was asleep for a few days.

Last night my husband noticed a smell coming from his tank. I was having a migraine and surprisingly couldn’t smell anything until he was right up close to me. His body had gone stiff in some places and goopy in others, and there was some white stuff on him which could be mould or maybe something coming out of him. He died in his sleep.

It’s still the early hours of the morning so he’s still in his tank for now. Later we are going to figure out the best way to remove his body from the shell, and will probably bury him in the pot with our wedding buddleia. I will probably make a shadow box for his shell much like Freya’s one.

I’m glad that we didn’t know he was going to die. Counting down the seconds with Freya was awful and I never want to do that again. It’s still a shock and I’m so upset but I’m glad it wasn’t drawn out.

We don’t really know what happened. The vet thought he picked up an infection from something, which shouldn’t really have been possible unless somebody put something weird in his tank (the lock had been broken for a while), I guess he just wasn’t able to heal from it, even though we thought he would be fine.

He should have lived for 10 years. We only had him for 3. It hasn’t even been 3 months since Freya died.

We know he was born at some point in the first half of 2018, so he may have turned 4 by now, but we could only celebrate July 1st as Jupiter Day, the day we brought him home.

If you have the chance to have a snail in your life, you should take it. They are sweet, and cheeky, and mischievous.

Jupiter, Joop-Joop, Joop, Jupa-Jup, Big J, I will love you forever. Please look after Freya until we can all see each other again.

(Auto-placed Advertisements)