Alan,
Thanks for the plug.  I buy rounds for no fiddler crabs.  They get nasty
after they've had a few.
 
Kurt
 
At 09:43 PM 2/9/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear James:
>You described, quite well, Euglandina rosea (Ferussac, 1821), pictured
>on page 86 of Tucker Abbott's Compendium of Landshells.  There is also a
>nice comment by Pilsbry in his Land Mollusca. . . book, volume II, pp.
>188-195 on the mollusc's well developed sense of smell and great speed
>(for a land snail) when tracking down food.  They range from South
>Carolina to Louisiana.  The so called Rosy Glandina, Tucker had to give
>a common name to everything, is quite a hungry carnivore.  In an attempt
>to curtail Acanthina fulica, which spread from Africa throughout the
>Indo-Pacific islands, someone had the bright idea to introduce
>Euglandina to eat the Acathina.  Unfortunately, the Euglandina is a
>carnivore on the indigenous snails on those islands, so as often with
>many things mans tries to do, his cure is worse than the disease.
>When I was thirteen, my family brought back a live Euglandina from
>Florida to our home in the midwest, and since we found it on the banks
>of a lake, and since we were shell collectors and knew ALL shells lived
>in water, we tossed the snail into our freshwater aquarium.  The snail,
>of course, crawled out.  We threw him back in.  Could not figure out why
>the snail did not appreciate it when we tried to drown him.  Now that I
>live in Florida, I sometimes find them attached to the wood door frame
>of my front door.
>Kurt Auffenburg, who is currently buying rounds for the fiddler crabs on
>Cedar Key, and one of the better 'landers' on the net might provide you
>some more data on this interesting pest.
>
>Alan Gettleman
>Merritt Island, FL
>
>James M Cheshire wrote:
>>
>> Dear all, today, I decided i would try and find some garden mollusks.
>> I was extremely successful. I got about 7 of what I would consider common
>> garden snails, and I managed to find a beautiful land snail that was
>> about 1 1/2"
>> in length. I need all you land snail experts to help me with
>> identification. The large
>> snail is orange-amber color and is approximately 34mm in length. It has
>> about 3 whorls,
>> and the aperture is faintly pearly when viewed from a certain angle.
>> Small striations cover
>> the shell vertically. The collumella is curved to the right, and is
>> abruptly cut off at it's base.
>> The body whorl is large and fairly elongate. Spire is short.
>> I live in the west florida panhandle, so focus on snails mainly from that
>> area.
>> If you know what this species is, let me know where to look for live
>> specimens, as they are
>> quite obscure.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> James C.
>