During lunch yesterday I picked up a gardening magazine belonging to one of my colleagues, and as I flipped through it I came upon a large full color picture of a snail. I figured the attached article was about controlling snails that feed on garden plants. And so it was - only it wasn't exactly an article, it was an advertisement - and the pictured snail was not one of the species that need to be controlled. Rather, it was a carnivorous snail that was being offered for sale as a means of controlling Helix and other molluscan garden pests. I visited their web site (www.biopest.com). The snail they are selling is Rumina decollata, which they list as "decollate predatory snail". Is this a reasonable approach to controlling snails in your garden? Or could the importation of such a species result in mass destruction of the local molluscan fauna? Paul M.