In Which The Staff Arrive Before Management

The Splatarium has residents.

Not Garys.

Obviously.

The Garys aren’t due until April, partly because there is apparently a correct season for recruiting experimental garden snails, which means this project has now acquired a six-month preparatory phase.

The springtails have arrived.

These are the clean-up crew.

Their job is to live in the substrate, eat mould, fungi and decomposing organic matter, and generally keep the place from turning into a tiny glass box of biological unpleasantness.

In return, they get accommodation, food, and approximately six months without being lumbered with three enormous molluscan colleagues dropping lettuce on the floor.

Seems fair.

They arrived today in a small tub of damp substrate containing what appears, at first glance, to be absolutely nothing. But they are there.

Tiny white things.

Everywhere.

Hundreds of them.

Excellent.

I tipped part of the culture into one side of the vivarium, tucked some of the existing leaf litter around it, gave everything a light misting, and watched my first experimental organisms immediately disappear underground.

Strong start.

The Splatarium itself is beginning to look less like an abandoned gecko enclosure and more like somewhere a snail might reasonably choose to live. There is deep substrate, cork bark, branches, leaf litter, artificial foliage, a water dish, drainage underneath, and numerous dark damp places in which to conduct important snail business.

The springtails now have until April to establish themselves.

I had briefly wondered whether they needed heating.

They don’t.

Apparently they’ll be perfectly happy at the current room temperature of around 16°C. They’ll reproduce more slowly than they would somewhere warmer, but given that they have six months to get themselves organised, there seems very little point in artificially accelerating matters.

So that’s it.

No snails.

No cucumber.

No data.

Just several hundred microscopic employees quietly preparing the workplace before management arrives.

Cucumber O’Clock now has a maintenance department.