So we’re sitting in the group room of a local bar after a neuroanatomy class and the topic of general disposition was introduced. In particular, what was the reason for the marked difference in demeanors between woolly monkeys and rhesus monkeys? I probably brought it up having just met a pet wooly monkey (“Monty” as I recall) who mingled well with a bunch of humans sitting around a living room. Monty’s passably civilized behavior was in stark contrast to what we all agreed would be the uncivilized to homicidal behavior of any rhesus monkey we had ever met.
The teacher, a Tallahassee neurologist, had joined us this evening and he forwarded the proposition that there was such a thing as “bad protoplasm”. Rhesus monkeys had it and wooly monkeys didn’t. His classification rang true as it was easy to think of animals whose mobility, agility and hostility far exceeded their station in life; those spiritually akin to the creature in the Alien series.
Based upon many encounters and several reasons my vote for baddest protoplasm goes to the common snapping turtle Chelydra serpentine. To begin with turtles as a group are not a first order menace. Oh a slider/cooter will take a swing at you every so often and a box turtle can probably pinch a finger in its closing shell but on the whole turtles are not exactly junk yard dogs. The common snapping turtle, however, is a junk yard dog. The species name says a lot about a striking speed that clearly impressed a visiting Swedish naturalist 250 years ago. And with a top wild weight of 75 pounds and an average of 10-35 pounds they are not to be tooted with.
My first tooting with came at about 10 when a pick-up safari was exploring a willow tree lined muddy creek behind our apartment. There was a piece of plywood, half in and out of the water, that one of the leader kids turned over. And under it was a 4 pound snapper also half in and out of the water. With slow menace he backed into the creek and was gone. I did not know such creatures existed and 50 yards from where I slept!
First capture was about a year later in the same creek. The fact that we had just returned from a Florida vacation must have accounted for the fact that I thought I was charging a big crab floating next to the far bank (pointy posterior shells as the similarity I guess). I picked up the one pound snapper and headed home where he likely stayed in an aquarium until he stunk us out –they have a distinctive unpleasant aroma.
The little ones, babies to about one pound, are fairly restrained; the attitude seems to set in at about three pounds but I don’t actually remember my first capture of the standard model. Fortunately snappers come with handles so if you get behind them you can pick them up by their long tails. This begs the question of “Why?” They bite, they’re big and they smell bad. This may explain the absent engram of first capture of a grown one as the typical conversation runs “I don’t want this thing; you want this thing?”
As driving teenagers we came across snappers in numbers from time to time. One day at Cove Lake, Dave and I were exploring a large area of foot deep water with a mud bottom. Snappers leave a characteristic trail in mud consisting of a two column path of foot prints with a continuous line up the middle where they drag their tail. We spotted the first trail and mud buried traveler quickly, then another and another. We ended up just counting them because if nobody wants one, fifty of the suckers are completely safe from even the sawed-off.
ML
3/17/07
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Friday, March 9, 2007
7. Pop's milk snake
Before I turned six I lived on the Pennsylvania/New York border; my family in Olean, my grandparents near Bradford. Pop’s house, which he said when last I saw him, had seen six generations with Shaving 2’s visit at the age of eight months. Everything seemed smaller than what I remembered except the field running up the hill from his back yard to the tree line. A sloping affair of knee high grass where the after dinner entertainment was watching the deer step out of the forest. (Once he said he had seen bear)
Pop worked his “leases”. Pennsylvania oil pumping stations where horse-shaped pumps delivered the greenish crude out of the ground into big open – wooden I seem to remember –Jacuzzi-like barrels. It smelled good but he said it would give me a headache.
Because of his work, Pop had a long shed; long enough to accommodate runs of pipe that go along with pumping oil. The shed was not far from the house and at the bottom of the field that ran the valley’s length. And along with the tools and shed of an oil man came scattered sheet metal roofing and a rock pile. And along with the sheet metal roofing and the rock pile came garter snakes galore!
Rock pile captures tended to be one snake per flipped rock. Not every rock, of course, but there were a lot of rocks. Sheet metal roofing turn-overs could often uncover more than one garter snake and I’d grab as many as I could. I don’t remember keeping them and didn’t know to use a pillow case at the time. There was one sweep were I carried a bucket and returned with five in about five minutes. I remember because somebody, Aunt Bid I think, said “Look at this, the gosh darn kid has already got five of them”. I also remember cutting one’s head off and cutting him open to discover what they ate. It was a worm but afterwards I felt the knowledge not worth the price. When I learned how to read I looked such matters up in books.
Garter snakes are not big biters but they are big poopers. Not a particularly pleasant aroma but you get used to it, as the price of doing this business, and it becomes the smell of success. Not unlike how your hands smell after a successful fishing trip.
Because garter snakes do not bite what happened one evening made an impression. I flipped the tin and there was a not-garter snake that reared back and bit me as soon as I reached for him. I dropped the tin and headed back into the house for dinner.
A decision faced me as I knew three things: a) it was not a garter snake, b) it bit me and c) some not-garter snakes were trouble. I figured I ought to tell somebody but also figured that some things could change that might include my being forbidden to catch snakes. Dying was also on my mind; decisions, decisions. I decided to just eat dinner and see how events unfolded.
In hindsight I am so sure it was a milk snake that I can almost see it now. From a practical stand point the real danger was zero (ah books) as the only indigenous venomous snakes were timber rattlesnakes – which Pop assured me he knew where to find but would not show me.
The question is; what should I have done? Probably I should have mentioned the bite but then again I lived didn’t I! And when you’re headed down that sawed-off path “sometimes you just have to say, what the spawn”. I never told anybody until now. Hope I don’t get in trouble.
ML
3/2/07
Pop worked his “leases”. Pennsylvania oil pumping stations where horse-shaped pumps delivered the greenish crude out of the ground into big open – wooden I seem to remember –Jacuzzi-like barrels. It smelled good but he said it would give me a headache.
Because of his work, Pop had a long shed; long enough to accommodate runs of pipe that go along with pumping oil. The shed was not far from the house and at the bottom of the field that ran the valley’s length. And along with the tools and shed of an oil man came scattered sheet metal roofing and a rock pile. And along with the sheet metal roofing and the rock pile came garter snakes galore!
Rock pile captures tended to be one snake per flipped rock. Not every rock, of course, but there were a lot of rocks. Sheet metal roofing turn-overs could often uncover more than one garter snake and I’d grab as many as I could. I don’t remember keeping them and didn’t know to use a pillow case at the time. There was one sweep were I carried a bucket and returned with five in about five minutes. I remember because somebody, Aunt Bid I think, said “Look at this, the gosh darn kid has already got five of them”. I also remember cutting one’s head off and cutting him open to discover what they ate. It was a worm but afterwards I felt the knowledge not worth the price. When I learned how to read I looked such matters up in books.
Garter snakes are not big biters but they are big poopers. Not a particularly pleasant aroma but you get used to it, as the price of doing this business, and it becomes the smell of success. Not unlike how your hands smell after a successful fishing trip.
Because garter snakes do not bite what happened one evening made an impression. I flipped the tin and there was a not-garter snake that reared back and bit me as soon as I reached for him. I dropped the tin and headed back into the house for dinner.
A decision faced me as I knew three things: a) it was not a garter snake, b) it bit me and c) some not-garter snakes were trouble. I figured I ought to tell somebody but also figured that some things could change that might include my being forbidden to catch snakes. Dying was also on my mind; decisions, decisions. I decided to just eat dinner and see how events unfolded.
In hindsight I am so sure it was a milk snake that I can almost see it now. From a practical stand point the real danger was zero (ah books) as the only indigenous venomous snakes were timber rattlesnakes – which Pop assured me he knew where to find but would not show me.
The question is; what should I have done? Probably I should have mentioned the bite but then again I lived didn’t I! And when you’re headed down that sawed-off path “sometimes you just have to say, what the spawn”. I never told anybody until now. Hope I don’t get in trouble.
ML
3/2/07
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