I found this 1/2 inch wide snail on some lettuce.  I vaguely remembered having heard of some rather devastating parasites that can be present in snails in some alternate forms.

 Snails are a common gardening problem, and so I decided to cook my lettuce, to be 100% sure that we do not catch any theoretical  parasitic beasties.  I have not seen that snails eat parsley, cilantro, oregano, or marjoram.  In fact these seem to discourage creepy crawlies on nearby plants.  I could find that snails are very common in Texas gardens, and I’ve seen them myself.  I could find no place where snails in Texas gardens are stated to be dangerous online.  Until I find otherwise, I am going to be careful and cook or at least peal raw vegetables from our garden.

The other reason that I cooked the lettuce, is that most of it is old and bitter, even if not bolted.

Here are the keywords I googled to find  the link to the recipe which I used for our Stir Fry Lettuce:  Chinese Stir-Fry Lettuce With Garlic  Recipe .  Rhonda Parkinson, recipe author, tells us that the Chinese always cook their vegetables.  When I think about it, this seems to be my experience.  This five star recipe worked even with our bitter old lettuce!