Is how we see what we see?

One odd thing about the South always amazes me. It has to do with herpetology. Yeah, that’s the branch of zoology concerned with reptiles and amphibians. You might think that I’m not an expert. I did, though, room with two men accomplished in the field as a college undergraduate. One earned a PhD in the field. The other used his Master’s Degree in Zoology to gain entry into Med School. Both are deceased now, unfortunately, and can’t bear witness.

The two of them had a habit of keeping live reptiles in our apartment. Need I say more? My impressions of the field of study are most extant.

Oh, and once, while stranded on an isolated base of the United States Navy, and suffering from poverty caused by a records SNAFU, I gained solace in my square time by reading, at the small base library, the classic work The Reptiles of North America by Raymond Ditmars.

So you see, by social media standards I am three steps above the “Exalted Expert” classification on the topic of snakes, the reptilian kind at least.

Here stands my dilemma. The common, what we call, Cottonmouth snake, Agkistrodon piscivorus is, of course, a venomous viper, also bearing the name “Water Moccasin.” They don't bear messing with, as the old folks used to tell us. They don’t tend to grow too large, being thick with blunt tails. Overall, these snakes normally range from 2 to 4 feet in length, but may grow longer. They do hang out near water, but seem to avoid stock ponds, maybe because cows tend to step on them.

Now, according to my former roommates, these snakes are somewhat secretive, hanging out in underbrush near those bodies of water. The two roommates had a difficult time finding one on various expeditions, a fact that I found most comforting back in the day.

Consider next the yellow-bellied water snake, Nerodia erythrogaste. These reptiles represent both a common and gregarious species. They are found just about everywhere in our state where there is a bit of water. In mating season, they tend to gather up and form writhing balls, for the pure fun of it, I suppose.

Here comes the rub. I don’t think I know of an Arkansan who has ever seen a water snake. Gosh, they fish, swim, hike, and cut down forests near lakes, never encountering a Nerodia. Odd, isn’t it? It’s like living in rural Arkansas and never seeing a Confederate flag.

On the other hand, I’m entertained almost weekly by the accounts of Cottonmouths on every lake, stream, pond, and mud hole in Arkansas. Giant ones, averaging six feet or more in length. You can hardly walk without stepping on one. Isn’t that something?

Yes, taxonomy is a strange thing. We tend, don’t we, to organize and classify our acquaintances the same as we do reptiles? As an admitted devotee of progressive government and politics, people classify me as a liberal, pronounced here “lib-ral,” and I’m not to be near their children or attend the local cross-burnings for fear of morality contamination. As Jimmy Buffett would say, “My feet stink and I don’t love Jesus.”

On the other hand, I tend to view folks who attend churches where they forbid their women to speak aloud in services as a tad backwards in the modern world. They must hate females, all of them, each and every one, wouldn’t you say? Don’t they behave like Neanderthals living in a homo sapiens world?

Wow. It just occurred to me. Maybe they aren’t, not all of them anyway. Maybe we just think about people the way we program ourselves to, seeing danger where none exists. Maybe we see venom where there is nary a drop.

I need to go study on this awhile.