Yesterday, we released Reginald (Agent 12), Beatrice (Agent 10), Sean (Agent 7) and Agatha (Agent 6) into the mossy verge in our garden. Last seen heading towards the neighbour’s fence and their runner beans. Still chipped and lively after 2yrs and 2mths of service (tagged on 12th February 2008). Between them they delivered a total of 599 messages. Our best performer was Reginald who delivered a total of 206 messages and Sean liked to take it easy with his average transfer time of 19 days 19 hours 37minutes 56 seconds.
We take the time to remember all the other original snails which were tagged in February 2008 who have sadly died during service. The good work of Fred (Agent 5), Walter (Agent 11), Francis (Agent 9) and Penelope (Agent 8 ) will be remembered. Between them they delivered a total of 431 messages. Fred achieved the slowest transfer time on record of 118 days 17 hours 17 minutes 26 seconds and Francis managed a super fast transfer time of 2 minutes 52 seconds. Walter was found dead on the forward reader on the 12th February 2010 after we spent the evening resolving a problem caused by a corrupt email that resulted in a number of his emails being posted repeatedly. We would like to take this opportunity to apologise for any inconvenience Walter may of caused. We will never forget him as he was the first to go missing when he laid his eggs in September 2009 (read the below article ‘Walter & the Cucumber’ for further information). It’s been a great couple of years working with these snails and we have learnt so much about their behaviour. We look forward to working with all the new recruits (40 spanish snails) we are introducing to a Real Snail Mail™ live enclosure in the Process as Paradigm exhibition at Laboral Centro de Arte y Creatión Industrial, Gíjon, Spain which starts next week.