CANDY CANE SNAILS

The photo to the left shows the tree-living Candy Cane Snail that's native to the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic.)  

The background of the shell is a creamy white, with typically 3 to 6 spiraling stripes of various colors, including brown, black, pink, green, purple or yellow in seven or eight whorls.  The shell looks like painted porcelain.  Yup, these snails live in trees, but they descend from the trees to lay their eggs in moist soil. 

These shells have been found in heaps in the Dominican Republic, indicating that it was a food source for indigenous peoples.  Early European explorers brought them back to Europe. 

When I find shells, they make their way to my treasure jar.  The day I strolled the Vatican grounds, I noticed a snail shell on the ground.  It came back home with me and its story means the world to me.  I remember the oyster shells on the beaches of South Padre Island.  If I could've picked up every single part of nature that brought joy to my heart, we would need a warehouse.  

This world is truly a fascinating place.  Just imagine all things in existence that we'll never see or know about.  That's why I enjoy hunting for phenomena and learning a morsel of information about them.  Only I know my personal history with every treasure in the jar, and I'm the only one who cares.  There will come a day when I'm no longer here and someone will pick up the jar and empty its contents into a dumpster.  That's the painful part of thinking about the future.  The things we hold dearest will lose that significance upon our departure.  

The spiral in a snail's shell is the same mathematically as the spiral in the Milky Way Galaxy, and it's also the same mathematically as the spirals in our DNA.  It's the same ratio that you'll find in very basic music that transcends cultures all over the world.  ~Joseph Gordon-Levitt