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If you have ever had a more unusual pet, you’ll be very used to the kind of comments that some people direct your way. This can range from anything between being completely grossed out and horrified by your pet, to being very curious and asking more questions than you could imagine. And there will be plenty of folk too who, whether it’s a snake or lizard, a spider or a snail, will accept that you have an exotic pet but definitely not consider it as important or valid as a pet as, say, a cat or a dog.

That’s just something that you have to deal with when you own a less ‘normal’ pet, and most folk aren’t bothered by it at all. After all, we can’t all be the same – and if your pet brings you joy and in return you shower it with love and appropriate care, then there’s no harm done at all.

But when the woman in this story lost one of her more unusual pets, she was devastated when – in a moment of horrible timing – her friend sent her a message she’d come to regret.

Read on to find out what happened.

AITA for snapping at my friend when she sent me a picture of escargot?

I have been friends with this girl for about five years now and we’re very close, but lately she has been annoying me more and more.

When we used to text, she was always a bit cold, but I knew that was just the way she was, especially since she was very friendly in real life, despite some conflict occasionally.

Lately, we’ve been seeing each other a lot less since we both travel a lot, but when we text it’s like I’m talking and she says something barely related.

Also, she has been self-victimizing a bit and acting pretty self centered and defensive recently but that’s another issue.

Let’s see where their problems really got started.

Anyways so about a year ago, a snail got into my house and I decided to keep it. Since then, I have found three more that I have been raising.

Today, I found one of my snail enclosures empty with the lid partially off and the two snails in the enclosure had escaped.

I found one but not the other so I’ve been kind of distraught and scared. I didn’t tell anyone since I have been looking around for it.

Today, after I had spent nearly two hours searching, she sent me a picture of a plate of escargot.

Yikes. Read on to find out how she felt about this.

I feel like that’s very disrespectful, given that she knows how much I love snails not as food, but as pets. I feel like that is the equivalent of me sending her a picture of fifty dead dogs (since she has a pet dog) or fifty corpses.

She doesn’t know about the snail I lost, but I don’t understand why under any circumstances she would think that was okay.

I always walk on eggshells around her, since she is very sensitive about everything and I am quite direct.

Maybe I should have asked what her intentions were but I just snapped in my mind.

Uh-oh. Let’s see what she said.

I called her and confronted her about it and she said it was fine, so I basically asked “what’s wrong with you” and she called me a ***** then hung up and blocked me.

I know we will talk again later, probably soon since my birthday is coming up and she was invited and our conflicts never last long.

I think on any normal day, I would have been annoyed by the photo but only mildly. But today since my snail is probably lost somewhere and I’ve been angry at her for a while anyways, I think that was the last straw with her.

AITA?

Honestly? Yes, the friend’s behaviour was kind of cruel and tactless, and a weird thing to send to someone with pet snails.

But as the woman admits, a big part of this being so upsetting for her was that she’d just lost one of her pet snails – something that her friend didn’t know about.

If she had sent the picture knowing the snail was missing, that would be a horrible thing to do – but without knowing, she wasn’t aware of the nerve she was going to touch.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person thought she’d overreacted, given her friend didn’t know.

While others thought she was being too sensitive and that the friendship clearly wasn’t working.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a sister who held up her end of a college savings bargain only to be ripped off by her scheming older sibling.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought she overblew the whole thing.

Sure, it’s understandable that people didn’t like the ‘fifty dogs’ comment. But for someone who adores her pet snails, it’s equally understandable that she genuinely thinks that this is a fair comparison – especially in a time when she is clearly very distressed about the loss of one of her pets. We dote on the animals in our care (even though there are ethical issues around just taking wild animals and calling them a pet), and to find that two are missing, and not be able to find one, must have been awful for her. She can be forgiven for being a little sensitive about the subject.

But what is her fault is how she reacted. Adults who have learned to regulate their emotions should be able to take a deep breath and then calmly explain to the friend that they didn’t appreciate the ‘joke’ and explain their context. A good friend would then likely be mortified and apologise for their poorly timed, admittedly tasteless joke, and try to make amends. But her friend wasn’t given this option, because instead of opening up, she lashed out instead. And that’s on her.