March 1, 2021 Jennifer Sarah Blakeslee, by her own admission, has “a propensity for weird animals.” The Beacon resident says this nonchalantly, which is less surprising when you learn she keeps snails as pets she gushes over them on Facebook and says her favorite creature is the turkey vulture. She acquired the snails after reading The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, which had been recommended by a friend. It tells the story of a woman who was bedridden and isolated for months and found solace in a garden snail kept in a tank nearby. “The way it was written pierced through my inability to focus [because of the ongoing pandemic] and I was enchanted by this notion of just this one tiny organism coming to symbolize so much,” Blakeslee says.