SINGAPORE – One thing I like about bouncing around taking on jobs is that I get to meet new people, see interesting new places and find new kinds of nightmarish animals to dislike.

Today, it is the turn of the apple snail. In a world with artificial intelligence, drones and self-driving cars, clearing a pond of apple snails still takes a pail, bare hands and wading.

Deputy director of gardens operations Lai Liangfa and I have donned knee-high rubber boots, which I thought would be enough to keep my trousers dry until I find that the Water Lily Pond is thigh-deep. The boots are purely decorative. To be fair, the sucking mud below would have devoured any other kind of shoe.

“See that? Those are snail eggs,” he says, pointing at a pink spot at the water’s edge, which I had thought was a discarded candy wrapper.

I wade over to the sacs, which are attached to plants. Each sac is a bright pink, palm-size cluster of balls, every one of which is capable of producing a fist-size plant chomper ready to turn the Water Lily Pond into just Pond.

Fun fact: One variety of apple snail was introduced into Taiwan to be farmed for meat, but some escaped into the rice fields and over time became an agricultural pest. To rub salt into a snail-shaped wound, no amount of garlic butter would convince the Taiwanese to embrace the escargot.

Apple snails have the audacity to lay eggs the colour of Barbie’s car out in the open because the sacs contain a neurotoxin th...