How To Make Apple Snail

Pomacea Maculata (Apple Snail)
(Any and all relations to the 1997 movie Titanic are purely coincidental and did not happen. The following is a work of fiction that is not related to the film in any way.)

Once upon a time in a swampy swamp there was a young Florida Apple Snail named Leopold. One day Leopold was searching for food and discovered a snail named Cal from a swamp a long ways away. He spoke of dark days when things called nematodes entered other snails and weakened them so that other animals could eat them more easily. He told Leopold of two snails named Jack and Rose who lived in a swamp named Titanic. He spoke of how after Jack drank water from an infected puddle he grew weak and could hardly move, almost as if he were frozen.
Rose cared for Jack and tried to nurture him back to health but failed. Eventually Jack was hardly able to move and then the alarm came. A caiman lizard named Glacier was wandering into Titanic Swamp. The pair of snails were trying to escape when they saw Glacier turn in their direction.
Jack pleaded with Rose to leave him but she refused until he told her that life is a gift and that he doesn’t plan on her wasting it. He said his luck ran out, but she still had a chance at life. He told her that her heart will go on and that he will always be with her. He said, "Listen, Rose. You're gonna get out of here, you're gonna go on and you're gonna make lots of babies, and you're gonna watch them grow. You're gonna die an old... an old lady snail, warm in her bed, not here, not this night. Not like this, do you understand me? Promise me now, Rose, and never let go of that promise.” She told him that she promised and that she would never let go. She said that she would always love him, and then she left and watched as Jack mustered all his courage and will power and inched his way toward Glacier, he looked back once and waved goodbye to his only love, Rose. And she watched as he was swallowed by the lizard. She managed to find a place to hide as Glacier ate 1500 of the snails that were in Titanic Swamp. Of all the snails that didn’t make it out before Glacier made it into Titanic
Swamp, only 6 survived. Leopold was visibly saddened by this sorrowful tale, and thanked Cal for his story. He continued on his journey to find food and discovered an elderly snail who was a whole 10 years old. “He is lucky to have lived for so long, because we have a constant loss survivorship curve which means our lifespans are often unrelated to age and our lives can end quite abruptly based on a number of things such as climate change and an increase in predator population,” thought Leopold, “we are kind of like the song birds in the trees, they sing their pretty songs, but can also be killed by many different things.
Come to think about it, I don't think I have ever seen an old song bird. Our population has grown at a linear rate, and hasn’t had a whole lot of variation because we lay a lot of eggs, sometimes 300 or so, and even if only half of them live our population goes up quite substantially because animals do not like to eat our eggs. We lay our eggs in big bunches like sea turtles, but instead of burying them we leave ours out on some plant stems.” Leopold began to think about all the snails that he knew and wondered what would it be like if all of them were gone. He realized how these snails were responsible for eating a lot of the surrounding plant life and that if they were all gone a lot of the plant life would be able to run wild. He also realized that animals such as the caiman lizard and the everglade kite would have to find other means of food. They would start eating other animals in the environment and could possibly wipe the other species out because of the increase in their consumption. Algae would grow up and then other small animals would have more to eat and would lead to their populations growing to be quite large and could lead
to other animals having more food, which would increase their population. This would then lead to these populations using all the available resources, making their populations fall again and come back down. "It would be a very strange time,” thought Leopold as he continued on his way. He met up with his friends, Tom and Ron and Jerry, at their favorite place to eat, JJ’s Algae, and had a wonderful time eating algae waffles, scrambled algae, and algae bacon.