Everglades National Park - Escargots

Crawling ever so slowly among the aquatic plants are apple snails -- golfball-sized mollusks that are able to breathe both underwater and in the air. (Unlike most other water-dwelling snails, apple snails have both gills and a simple type of lung.) At night, the brown-shelled snails climb up grass blades or other leaves and deposit their eggs just above the water. Although nature has designed the shells as protection, they don't always do their job: a great many animals eat apple snails, and some have only this particular item on their menu. The Everglades kite, a crow-sized bird of prey, uses its sharp, curved bill as a snail fork to pry the snails from their shells. Circling over the wet prairies, its wings outstretched to 3½ feet, the kite scouts for its food. Spying a snail, it swoops down, snatches the creature with one claw, and flaps away. Then the kite settles on a high tree and, using its beak, removes the fleshy animal from the shell. Rare and endangered in the United States, the bird depends on for its survival on the availability of apple snails. In years of prolonged drought, when the withered grass is littered with bleached and empty shells, kites fare poorly.

Another snail lover is the cranelike limpkin, a big brown and white speckled bird that has been nicknamed the crying bird because its call sounds like a grief-stricken human being. Hopping along the edges of watercourses on its long, thin legs, the limpkin repeatedly pecks at vegetation until it detects the apple snail's rounded shell. The bird swiftly plucks its quarry, flies to more solid ground, and drops the snail, waiting for it to relax and extend its soft body from the shell. Limpkins, found in the United States only in Florida and Louisiana, feed mainly at night.

River otters relish apple snails too, crunching the shells, with loud pops, in their powerful jaw. Alligators gorge on these mollusks, bullfrogs swallow them whole, and turtles grind them methodically, leaving shattered shells strewn behind them in an untidy trail. The leathery softshell turtle hunts snails furtively, raising its long, pointed head above water for a quick, spying glance before retreating below the surface. Like most other creatures, the turtle is itself prey, not only to alligators but also to humans, who savor it as a culinary treat. In the Everglades, where it plows down aquatic grasses in search of snails, fish, and anything it can catch, it grows almost as big as a washtub.

Skimming along, the anhinga, or snakebird, looks more reptilian than avian when it sticks its long, S-shaped neck above the water. Periodically it dives underwater and skewers a fish or small snake on its pointed beak; then it pops to the surface to gulp down its catch. When finished feeding, the anhinga climbs out of the water, finds a dry, elevated spot on which to perch, expands its tail into a fan, and spreads its wings, its glossy black features glistening in the bright sunlight. This display is not just for show. It used to be thought that, owing to the lack of a protective covering of oil, the anhinga's feathers became waterlogged and so had to be dried out before the birds could fly. It is now believed that they spread their wings as a means of controlling body temperature.