Snake Tails, 2001/05/22:18:59
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Did the snake deceive in Eden Or did it only take the fall For a choice Eve made with courage That left her fearful mate appalled? If the snake woke us to knowledge We are surely in its debt; If Eve instead alone did act We should hardly be upset With a creature creepy crawly With a tongue that tastes the air With a skin that sheds renewing With a body lithe and fair |
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Do snakes have tails? Or, to what in reality does TAIL refer? Or, why is the edge that we draw between the body of a snake and its tail? While camping on the weekend I went canoeing. Charleston Lake has the kind of shoreline I like: lots of rocky islands I can slide along the edges of, keeping an eye out for anything interesting. The day was warm and sunny, the kids were playing happily on the beach with the other adults, and so I paddled off to see what I could see. There was all kinds of stuff to see. Lichen species change near the water, from a grey fluted one a few feet above the water to a black, flat one whose patches extend a foot or so under the surface. That itself raises the question of how you identify the species of a comensal organism: do the fungal and algal parts only pair up in specific combinations, or can you have fungus A paired with algae B and C? Those are the kinds of questions best contemplated while drifting lazily along a few inches from the rocks, wearing the canoe like comfortable old shirt, while the sun warms the rock to one side and the water to the other, while high overhead gulls and swallows dance to their different drummers, and the world is at peace. After squeezing the canoe over a slightly too prominent rock, and leaving a tiny bit of the gelcoat behind, I noticed a long sinuous black shape on a shelf a meter or so above the water. It was just too high to see properly, so I stood up and leaned my hands against the rock, holding the canoe steady. That brought my head level with the snake--a racer--sunning itself. It didn't trust me, which given the history of humans and snakes isn't something I can reasonably hold against it. But while it raised its head to keep an eye on me it didn't slither away immediately. My knapsack has a lot of stuff in it. Some reading material--Paradise Lost and a selection of Epicurean fragments--as well as my paper journal, but mostly odds and ends that might be useful to have around. I was a boy scout once, and have striven to "Be Prepared" ever since, which mostly means carrying around as a matter of routine an odd assortment of widgets, including a folding binocular that is almost completely but not quite totally useless. Not only is it useful for starting fires (which I might need, as my waterproof container of matches is mysteriously missing) it turns out to be particularly well-suited for snake-watching from a distance of two or three feet. Training the glass on the snake's body, I could see the markings around its head a bit better, and when it turned toward me I could make out the distinctly sardonic set of its mouth. But what was most interesting was that the tail was quite distinct from the body. The snake's scales run down the tube of its body in parallel lines until about 3/4 of the way from the head a number of them converge and a different set of lines takes over, these ones on the noticeably tapering cone of the tail. The region where the two sets of lines of scales met was clearly where any reasonable person would draw the edge that separates the body from the tail. One can imagine snakes whose scales get smaller toward the end away from the head, so they don't have any such convenient distinction. And one can imagine someone who didn't have the opportunity to observe a snake at such close quarters not noticing the discontinuity I used to draw the edge I did. In such cases, to such people, snakes would not have tails. To me, now, they do. It turned out that my snake was not alone--a few feet away, under an overhang of rock and beneath a gnarled but greening bush, three or four companions shared the splendor of the sun. My moving about with the binoculars must have disturbed them, because the first I knew of their presence was a head popping up to give me an irate stare, as if to say, "What the hell are you doing coming banging on our front door at this time of day? Why aren't you asleep like a sensible snake!?" They didn't seem too bothered, though, and eventually settled back down, having decided perhaps that despite thousands of years of persecution humans might at last be coming to their senses, and willing to live with our podistically challenged neighbors in peace. |