snails collected and cleaned getting ready to pack orders
Mary and her family moved into a 7 acre orange grove in 1978. Their 500 orange trees were devastated with brown garden snails. For the first few years, they put out snail bait. The poison was detrimental in many ways, for example, the smell was terrible, it was bad for the animals, and it was unsafe for the children. In 1985 Mary saw an ad for decollate snails in an catalogue and, desperate for a solution to the bad snail problem, she decided to try them. The 100 snails that arrived she could hold in the palm of her hand. Expecting that this would never really be a solution to her gigantic problem, she threw them under a nearby tree and forgot about them.
A few years later, she noticed there were substantially less bad snails and considerably more decollate snails in that area of release. Each year, the trend continued until she could barely find a bad snail. That’s when she realized that the decollate snails were the most effective, natural way, to control her brown garden snail problem and her grove had never looked better. She knew at this point she had to share this amazing story and began giving them away. In 1991 someone asked if she could pay Mary for her snails and she has been known as the “Snail Lady” ever since. Mary has sold over 2 million snails to date.