MOBILE, Alabama -- Volunteers who hate giant snails are needed Saturday morning to help kill as many gastropods as possible in Langan Park and along Three Mile Creek in Mobile.

Repeated efforts to eradicate Amazonian apple snails have failed. The creatures appear to have become established in both Three Mile Creek and the park. For the time being, scientists are trying to keep the snails from expanding their range into the Mobile-Tensaw Delta.

"We really need folks with their own small jon boats, canoes, or kayaks; however, volunteers walking bank edges are also effective," said Denise Rowell, with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. "If you do plan to walk lake or stream edges that most of the banks are very soft-bottomed, so old sneakers are likely a better bet than boots."

Rowell said volunteers would get wet and dirty and should dress accordingly.

People volunteering at the Langan Municipal Park Lake will meet in the first large parking lot next to the boardwalk bridge near the middle of the lake. This location is off Ziegler Road. Take Ludlow Circle into park entrance on the North side of the lake. The parking lot is across the lake from the Mobile Museum of Art.

For people with small boats planning to work in Three Mile Creek, met at McLean Park, which is at the end of Park Drive off Springhill Avenue.

The snail eradication is a joint enterprise put together by Mobile Baykeeper, the Alabama Division of Wildlife & Freshwate Fisheries, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

The snail killing operation will run from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Call Mobile Baykeeper at 433-4229 for more information.