TALK about snail mail!Suffolk sculptor Susan Rodwell was stunned when she got a decimated postcard from Cornwall which had been ravaged by glue loving snails.

TALK about snail mail!

Suffolk sculptor Susan Rodwell was stunned when she got a decimated postcard from Cornwall which had been ravaged by glue loving snails.

A handwritten note attached to the postcard, explained that snails were the culprits because they loved the taste of the glue.

Mrs Rodwell, 67, from Holbrook, near Ipswich, said: “It came in a plastic bag which was printed saying something like 'from the Royal Mail, we are frightfully sorry for the damage to your correspondence'.

“Then written in Biro on it was a note from the local postal workers saying 'card damaged by snails, they like the glue on stamps'.

“I couldn't believe snails had gobbled off all the pictures and eaten the stamp completely.

“There were six photographs on the front of the postcard, a lot of the surface of the pictures had been eaten off in trails and the stamp was gone completely.

“The postcard was more or less readable, there was a small piece that was completely gone. Surprisingly it wasn't slimy at all.

“I don't know if it's just Cornish snails that do this, I've never heard of anything like it before.

“The Royal Mail did a very good job getting it to us considering it didn't have a stamp.”

Her daughter Camilla Rodwell , 42, had enjoyed a week long break in a rented cottage in Cornwall with her husband Chris Buckley when she penned the colourful postcard and posted it in a box in the wall of a house in the village of Treligga.

She said: “There were creepers all around the postbox so I'm guessing the snails climbed up that and got into the letterbox from there.”

A Royal Mail spokesman added: “It is an illustration that our people do go the extra mile to get mail to its destination even if it is damaged. We are happy to be of service.”