The garden after rain

A garden is not one habitat. To a snail it is a set of microclimates a few centimetres apart. The top of a leaf in sun is a desert. The underside of the same leaf, the seam under a brick, the damp lip of a gutter, and the soil beneath a courgette leaf are different rooms. After rain, the doors between those rooms open, and animals that spent the day sealed in place begin to move.

Dusk plus wet ground is the reliable hour. A dry evening can look empty, which does not mean the garden is empty. It means the snails are in the rooms you have not turned over. Look under pots before you look on the path. Look at the shady side of a low wall. Look where mulch meets soil. A torch held low, almost parallel to the ground, makes wet bodies and fresh trails stand out against dark earth.

What you will mostly find in a temperate vegetable bed is a handful of species doing ordinary grazing and detritus work. A brown garden snail, a banded Cepaea, a small glass snail under the leaves, and almost certainly a slug, which is a snail whose shell has been reduced or lost. They are not spread evenly. One wet row of seedlings can hold dozens. The gravel path beside it can hold none. Counting on a single night gives you a weather report, not a population estimate. Count again after a dry week and the number will have fallen without anyone intervening.

The same rain that makes them visible is the rain that keeps them alive. The impulse to treat the appearance as an invasion is understandable and often early. Many of the animals were already resident. The rain took attendance.