I've looked at snails from both sides now....

Cleaning out the greenhouse, as one does at this time of the year, I discovered a clutch of snails had fastened themselves beneath a glass pane that I use as makeshift staging. I'm well-aware that my greenhouse is not snail-proof and I regularly remove lodgers . This lot had glued themselves to the glass and sealed themselves up with the opercula (lids) that prevent dehydration while they over-winter. They didn't realise of course that the glass, being transparent, could be turned over to reveal their own little window panes (and a spider in a silken nest).

Until I researched opercula I didn't know that the Victorians, always keen to plunder Nature's treasure box for their own purposes, invented operculum jewellery although  it was made from the tougher and more eye-catching lids of sea snails.