My fellow Americans, I don't know how to tell you this. There's no combination of words that would make this news easier to swallow, so I'm just going to have to lay it out there. The United States of America is under attack.
By whom, you may ask?
Giant snails.
Giant, creepy, African snails are currently slithering their way across backyards in Florida (because OF COURSE it's Florida) until they have their way and eat all our oranges.
To properly convey the level of terrified you should be, allow me to share some unnerving facts about these slimy beasts.
1) These snails can grow larger than a baseball:
I MEAN WHAT THE WHAT. That thing could suck your face off.
2) They have no natural predator. According to the video, agriculturists usually try to eradicate pests with natural predators to be all PC and not tick off PETA or whatever, but nothing in the wild eats these things. Probably because they taste like hatred and unjustified revenge and mucus. So they just go on reproducing and eating all our food until we eventually die off and snails take over the continental United States and rename it Snailtopia and then China WINS. And we don't want that.
3) They can lay up to 1200 eggs PER YEAR PER SNAIL. TWELVE ZERO ZERO. This is not conducive to avoiding Snailtopia.
4) They eat "literally everything that grows." People grow. Are we a target? Well, we grow for a little while. Maybe I should revise that to "children grow." OMG are the children in danger? This thing just got real. Eradicate the snails... FOR THE CHILDREN.
Keeping all of these horrifying factoids in mind, the state of Florida has assembled a team of SNAIL HUNTERS (trademark pending, probably) to go around to people's backyards and dig up African Land Snails so that we don't become slaves of a snail race in 2054, which I appreciate, considering how much Dr. Who I've been watching lately.
I also enjoy the fact that someone will be able to put "SNAIL HUNTER" on their resume for the rest of their lives if they so choose (I totally would).
Florida is confident that they will "win the snail battle." Let's hope so. I am far too wimpy to do manual labor for snail kings.
Join with me in the fight to prevent Snailtopia. Y'know, in spirit. Because I am not going anywhere near those things.