The Life of a Snail

How long do Garden Snails live and how far do they travel? Not sure what the real answers are, but I do know that they must be something like '3yrs plus' and 'not very far'. I know this because today we found this on the garden fence:

Apart from it being a bit muddy, you'll also notice a painted orange spot. Some of you may well remember seeing this snail before on the blog - and like me you may not have realised just how long ago that was! This snail was painted with day-glo nail varnish in our garden way back on 14/06/2009, along with three others. I last posted about them in 2010 and don't recall seeing them at all last year.

So this snail was already a reasonable size when painted, and that was just a couple of weeks short of three years ago. Amazing that the nail varnish lasted so well - why do women have to keep slapping it on when a snail can keep it on for so long?