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Beach Art, Plough Shell, Natures Valley, South Africa 2013, African Stories.||.Oberholzer: My latest book on the Karoo is done and dusted and hopefully lying on a couple of wine tables in this, our Haphazardland. My creative thoughts now swing from road art to beach art. Beach art can consist of many themes and abstractions, usually involving sand. I walk down to the beach and look around. It's a 4-kilometre-long beach. I have my camera equipment and a short stick with a cloth wrapped around one end and --- oh yes, a bottle of household Ammonia. This is a dangerous substitute for a bottle of Shiraz. The only other person on the beach is a fisherman. He uses bait to haul in his fish and I use the optical refraction of light on an electronic screen to haul in images and both of us dream of catching a good one. It is low tide and thousands of Plough Snails are weaving their endless patterns on the sand. These little slimy f#ckers are scavengers that scent decaying animal matters. Three of the little shits head towards my toes. These little grovelling things are called ‘Bullia digitalis'. Snails do not have a spinal cord, which makes them invertebrates. The conclusion here is that snails have no brains. They sense with a nerve cluster situated in their left eye. I lie not. Starting the art process, I carefully watch a group of snails scavenging. Some are more gifted in trail designing than others. These must be the ones with the bigger left eyes. After a while, I choose the most gifted one. I take him to a clear patch of wet sand. The short stick with the cloth is now dipped in the Ammonia. The snail starts his sand trailing. Here is where the creative process comes in. Plough snails absolutely hate the smell of Ammonia. You now carefully coax the little scavenger, using the stick, to do a particular circuit. It always veers away from the Ammonia cloth. When you are satisfied with your snail's graphic creation you remove the stick and the snail ploughs off to join his other crawling brethren. You quickly capture his image before he crawls out of your frame. Edition No.1 of the beach art project has been completed and no harm was done to any of the ploughing snails. (KEYSTONE/LAIF/Obie Oberholzer)