“You would never imagine that you could connect with a snail,” says Nadia Giosia. But the evidence is inching slowly up her hand. When the pandemic forced her into her Los Angeles apartment, her initial response was to bring the outdoors inside: she bought houseplants. Giosia did not anticipate a stowaway – but when her new ivy arrived, nestled within its leaves was a snail. Giosia debated what to do. She read on Google that snails could carry rat lungworm disease – “which doesn’t sound great on paper”. But Giosia felt confident that if she put it outside, where there were crows and pesticides, the snail would not survive the day. Perhaps most pertinently: she was lonely. At the start of 2020, Giosia – a comedian and television chef, and former host of the Food Network series Nadia G’s Bitchin’ Kitchen – had been gearing up to pitch a new show. When coronavirus struck, she was able to support herself with consulting work, but she had time to fill. “And I’ve got to say,” she says, “a mollusc is a nice companion.” Giosia kept the snail and called him Leroy. Three months later, Leroy is three times the size he was when he arrived, nourished by cuttlefish bone (for calcium) and cucumber (as a treat). “What’s nice about snails,” Giosa says, holding up Leroy on her hand to her computer’s camera, “is that they are very obvious creatures: if they don’t like something, they go into their shell.” Leroy, antennae waggling, is plausibly upbeat. Now, after all, is his time to shine. Snails are having a moment in 2020, their silvery trail stretching from TikTok, where the #snail hashtag has more than 100m views (and #snailmom, 10m); to the New York Times, which published a “letter of recommendation” for snails as pets in July. That same month, The Snail Hospital joined Instagram, sharing stories of injured snails on the road to recovery. This new appreciation seems to be an outcome of the pandemic making our worlds smaller, forcing us to slow down to their speed. New Zealand pop singer Benee said she was “fascinated” by snails while in lockdown in Auckland: “There wasn’t really a lot to be doing, so I would spend a lot of time outside looking at snails.” The molluscs were mobile where she was not. She started to imagine the pandemic from their perspective: did they wonder where the people had gone? The result was a song called Snail – with the refrain “When it’s day, hide away / But come out, when it rains” – which Benee released as a single in August. She called it her “lockdown song”. On Instagram, snails have emerged not just as a source of inspiration for artists, but their subjects. In September, artist Chloe Wise shared a photo of a tiny snail with the caption: “Friend”. Chicago-based creative duo Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland have been shooting snails in elaborate miniature sets – a bowling alley, a diner, a mall – since about 2016, but their projects have become more ambitious in quarantine. In May, they started staging scenes from classic horror films featuring their snail Velveeta, starting with the bloody elevator from The Shining. (Prints are available for purchase.) Last week, Murawski shared their painstaking recreation of a scene from Matilda, a project she had worked on for a month “to help break up the intensity of the last few weeks”. For Victoria Cottrell, a 21-year-old engineering student in Los Angeles, what began as a boredom-buster through quarantine sparked a surprisingly lucrative business. About six months ago, she came upon some snails in her neighbor’s yard and thought them “cute”. Where her neighbor saw pests to be salted, Cottrell saw a potential pet. She took some home and put them in an empty tank. In the summer months, she would spend entire days outside with Gary, Turbo and Maurice: “They’d be hanging out on the grass, I’d take a book – it was fun.” But Cottrell was not prepared for them to reproduce: all snails have both male and female reproductive organs. Within a month, she says, “I had maybe 100, 200 baby snails that I did not know what to do with”. She took a punt on listing them for sale on Etsy – and was flooded with interest. Today she has sold 57 garden snails at $8 a pop (excluding shipping). Cottrell is somewhat bemused by her success: “They’re not different from any other snail than you would find in the garden.” Nevertheless, her customers have been delighted. Demand looks set to soar. Last month, New York magazine’s cutting-edge consumer vertical The Strategist declared snails the perfect “pandemic pet” – not least for their ease of disposal, should the novelty wear off. Giosia, at least, does not anticipate losing interest. Three months ago she knew nothing about snails – “I’d never even eaten escargot.” Now she rattles off facts with enthusiasm, and even had dreams of snuggling with a giant gastropod (“it was a lonely night”). Giosia has even acquired a second snail from Cottrell: a “partner in slime” for Leroy, which she named Edna. They share a 12 sq in tank, kitted out with organic coconut coir, sphagnum moss, filtered water and a jade plant to climb on. An upgrade may soon be in order. While taking pictures of Leroy and Edna cuddled up together last week, Giosia noticed that Edna’s “neck-penis” was inserted in Leroy’s “neck-vagina”. “Yes, their genitalia is in their neck,” she marvels. “You wouldn’t even know!” One of them is now pregnant; and though Giosia has no desire to branch into snail breeding herself, it at least promises some excitement in the coming weeks. Leroy’s arrival in her life was a “slimy little blessing” – not only for adding interest to her days, but also showing her how to pass them. In lockdown, Giosia observes, we have all been forced into the slow lane: “He really was a great teacher in that regard.”