Poor Gary

Oh no! Got a snail last night for the fish tank, to help with a little algae issue that is growing. (Pun intended)

Unfortunately no one at the pet store mentioned not to put it in a tank with aquarium salt, which I have in my tank for the ghost shrimp.

So this morning I found my poor beautiful "Gary" dead.  How do I know it was the salt that killed him?  I found him shell up IN the salt cup!

As soon as I saw him in there, I thought: Hey, doesn't salt kill slugs?  Aren't snails basically slugs with houses? D'oh!!


I'm sad. I spent 45 minutes picking out just the perfect snail.  And the kids were so excited about him. And then I mercilessly killed him.  Poor guy never had a chance. :(

Update: So, because I wasn't 100% sure he was dead (he was still black and shiny in the shell, not discolored and dry) I put him in a plastic cup with water from the tank.  I wanted to a. observe him to confirm he was dead and b. return him for a refund if he was.  But when we were leaving for school/work I saw him crawling around!!  So, he's not dead!  But is he dying?  Hmm... I have done some preliminary googling for "mystery snail" and "aquarium salt" and I have found conflicting opinions.  Some say it will kill them for sure.  Some say that they can tolerate a high level of salinity in the water.  I need to find out for sure, so I can know how to proceed.  (If he is still alive when I get home from work)

Any experienced aquarium aficionados...please feel free to offer some advice.

This is an ugly post

I hate the "I was abused" defense.

I hate it.

Oh, I know what you are thinking "How can you judge someone unless you've walked in their shoes? You have no idea how that could mess a person up."

Well, I'm going to share something with you that I've only shared with very few people in my life:

I was sexually abused as a young child.

I haven't shared this with many people for all of the myriad of reasons people generally don't share things like this...

It's embarrassing.

I didn't want to make other people uncomfortable.

I don't want to hurt the people indirectly involved.

And hell, maybe tomorrow I'll regret this coming out and wish I'd just kept it pushed in the back of my mind, but right now I'm furious.

I don't know whether Casey Anthony killed her daughter or not.  Obviously the circumstantial evidence piled high against her.  But I'm furious that she and her defense team used the allegations of childhood sexual abuse as some sort of excuse for her erratic and neglectful behavior as a mother.

Sure she partied when she should have been looking for her missing daughter, but oh poor Casey was abused as a child, so you can understand....

No.  No, I can't.

My emotional scars don't make me neglect my sons...they've done the opposite.  They've made me become what some would deem overly protective about their care.

They are why I refused to put my sons in daycare.  They are why I have only let a handful of selective people (mainly their grandparents and godmother) babysit them.

I could never leave them alone in a room, even for two minutes with someone I didn't trust 100% to not hurt them, because I won't allow my child to have to endure the kind of trauma that I did.  Even if other people can't understand why I don't "just hire a sitter".

I'm not saying I don't think she was abused.   I wouldn't presume to know the answer to that.  But I do not accept said abuse as some kind of defense for her deplorable actions (and I'm counting all of them, regardless of whether she actually murdered her daughter).

I've kept quiet about this for a long time.  As most people do.  It's a dirty secret we try to bury deep inside and not think about.  Maybe I wouldn't even be coming clean now if it weren't for the perceived anonymity of the internet.

But reading these articles.  Seeing the way that the defense tried to manipulate and exploit a very real, tender, and hurtful subject as a way to excuse her actions (or non-actions)...I just have to say, as a "survivor" myself, that abuse is not an excuse!