Todd almost choked on his lunch when she said it.

“I’m sorry, say that again?”

“I said, they’re everywhere. It’s absolutely unbearable.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Benton, but did you say you had purple snails?”

There was a pause. “Yes…yes, purple. At least, that’s how they look to me. Jeb, my husband, thinks they’re more a lavender color though.”

Todd put his sandwich down and tried to make some sense what he’d just been told. She couldn’t have seen purple snails. This sweet little old lady he was speaking to must be senile or have bad eyes or something.

“Okay, so how many of these…snails are there?”

“Like I said, they’re everywhere – the living room, the kitchen, the basement…it’s terrible.”

“That sounds like some infestation you’ve got there.”

“Can you help?”

“Um…yeah, I’ll come take a look. Give me your address.”

She complied and he wrote it down. After he hung up with her, he traced the numbers on the paper thoughtfully. Was this a prank? No, kids prank-called businesses, not little old ladies.

Then they must be seeing them wrong. There’s no such thing as purple snails. But if there were…it would certainly be one helluva find.

He looked up at the clock. It was lunchtime and he was the only one holding down the fort at the moment. He had six people that worked under him and usually they were the ones to go out and investigate. As the manager, all he had to do the paperwork and delegate duties to the employees. His secretary was even out to lunch for the next twenty minutes or so.

He studied the address again – 1453 Seabay Road. That was roughly five or ten minutes away. He could just wait until someone comes back for him to send out. After all, what’s twenty minutes? It wasn’t like the snails would get up and leave in that time frame.

But what if they were some new kind of insect breed? What if he was looking at the find of the century? His name in the papers would look a lot prettier than one of his coworkers.

He glanced at the clock. It was more than enough time for him to go out, have a look, then set them up for an appointment and be back before the rest of his staff came back. Worst case scenario, the old lady was color blind and he’d be back before the cushion in his chair got cold. Best case scenario, he’d be at ground zero of one of the most amazing discoveries known to man.