Insert Witty and Cummulative Title Here, or, Some Thoughts on Queso and Snails

There are a great many pluses living on West Coast, and SoCal in particular.  It barely rains (to be continued later), you're close to both tourist attractions and places only "locals" know (some really cool ones my friends have found), and you've got mountains and beaches.

But the one thing the West Coast ain't got is queso.

Now of course I was expecting the Mexican food to be different here, hopefully in a more authentic and better way, and it has.  But to open a menu and see salsas, quacamole, and a variety of other appetizer options but no queso is just disheartening. I found queso listed on a menu once, ordered it, and was saddened to see it was just melted cheddar (not the white cheese I had been searching this coast for).

I know I could go to a store, pick out the right white cheeses and just make my own queso.  But it's just not the same as sitting in a restaurant and quietly gorging yourself on chips and lactose before your full meal arrives, challenging you to make room for it too.

Guess that doesn't sound very west coast, though, does it?
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Back home, when it rains for hours and hours, you can find worms all over sidewalks that are next to decently large grassy areas (on a rural college campus, that's every sidewalk).  I was told or possibly assumed that all the rain made the soil too moist and the worms had to come up to the surface for some air, as if they were drowning.

Apparently, the composition of the soil here is drier and worms don't even bother living in it. So what comes out when it rains?

Snails.  Snails (and slugs, the temporarily homeless snail) are on the sidewalks, the parking lot, sometimes the walls of the outside of my apartment complex.  They aren't particularly more attractive or less attractive than worms, but they are definitely more guilt inducing.

While I try to be considerate of other living things, you can't watch out for them all.  Especially when they are all over your sidewalks.  At least with worms, if you stepped on one you would never know it and you could maintain a blissful ignorance and continue with your day.

But snails have that hard shell that you only hear crunching under your shoe when it's too late, when you've already destroyed their home and probably pushing tiny, jagged pieces of it into their squishy little bodies.  You look down after and you feel even worse.

It's just one snail though, right? Sure, on a normal sunny day when a random snail decided it needed a little adventure, sure, maybe.  But not the 20 snail carcasses lining your path to the front door or to the P.O. Box or to the garage that label you and your fellow apartment dwellers as weapons of mass destruction and insecticide*.

I try my best to look out for them, but even someone else's abandoned carnage still pinches my conscience.


*Although there's apparently no direct word for snail-killing, there are a ton more killing words than I ever would've guessed...but now am curious as to why they were invented. -Cide Words