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
