Ew!

It’s a large parking lot. There’d been no rain since the night before. I was there in the bright and fairly warm noon sun.

That’s what makes this all more ominous, really, because of what I saw, smack in the middle of a lane.

A snail.

I hate snails. (Hey, some of you are freaked out by clowns. Cut me some slack here.)

This snail was still alive. Not robustly so by any means, but alive. Gooey-ily snailishly extant. It was trying to move.

Think about it.

How did it get there?

Not during the rain last night, it would’ve been run over by the time I showed up. Trust me, it’s a very busy parking lot. I had to circle twice to find a space.

It couldn’t have gotten there after the rain because it’s a sunny day and the asphalt was way too warm to be snail-compatible.

Oh, right, I haven’t hit the obvious yet. That stranded snail is a metaphor for the human condition. We are all alone and adrift on treacherous ground blah, blah, blah.

Can we go back to the puzzle now? Because it’s really bugging me.

Get it? Bug!

Okay, a snail isn’t really a bug, but some of you are freaked out by spiders and I haven’t got anywhere else to go with this and it really is bugging me.