When Stijn François set out for work one morning in British Columbia, Canada, he expected an ordinary commute.
But just a few miles down the road, he noticed something small clinging to the edge of his car hood — and his drive quickly turned into an unexpected rescue mission.
At first glance, François assumed it was just a stray leaf or pine cone that had dropped from the tree he parks under.
“I thought it was a leaf at first,” François told The Dodo. “Or a pine cone.”
He was wrong.
But as he looked closer, the “leaf” twitched — and two tiny antennae popped up.
It was a snail, somehow holding tight to the speeding car as if on the adventure of a lifetime.
“It didn’t move the whole drive,” François said. “I was hoping it didn’t fly off. I may have even driven a little slower than normal.”
When he arrived at work about six kilometers away, the determined little traveler was still right where he’d started — snug on the hood. That’s when François realized just how far the snail had gone.
“Google says that a snail might travel between 100 meters and 1 kilometer per year, and they only live two to three years,” François wrote in a post. “So this one might be a record-breaking snail.”
For François, the work parking lot was familiar territory — but for the snail, it was an entirely new world.
Unsure whether to intervene, François decided to leave his hitchhiker be in case it wanted to tag along for the ride home later.
But when his shift ended and he returned to his car, the snail was gone. All that remained was a faint, glistening slime trail tracing its path down the side of the hood.
“I allowed it the dignity to continue its journey alone,” François said. “I did a double check that I couldn’t see it before I left.”
Though it was a brief encounter, François couldn’t help but feel moved by the moment — and the tiny traveler who turned an ordinary commute into something quietly extraordinary.
“I hope its journey ended in a good spot,” he said.
