Local Community Group (or the unintentional propagators of mass hissssss-teria)
CLICK HERE for Part 1 of this series
Moving into a new neighborhood presents an abundance of challenges. Settling into a new home with new routines, new schools, and new commutes is just…..a lot of new. I’m not the biggest fan of new. I like familiar. Aside from the team at Florida is Sinking, I’ve had the same handful of friends for the last twenty years. If someone called me an introvert, I wouldn’t call them a liar. My wife is the complete opposite of everything I just said. She floats effortlessly through conversation with strangers. She appreciates the newness. She thrives in it.
Once upon a time, my wife and I found ourselves as the fresh-faced, most recent residents of an already well established community. She naturally joined the community facebook group as one who likes to be in tune with her surroundings. She utilized the group for networking and connecting with others. I eventually joined as a show of solidarity, albeit, strictly as the occasional observer with no real desire to participate. I’d open it from time to time, mostly out of boredom. I suppose, at first glance, the group functioned with the sort of normalcy any of them might. Small business referrals, lost dogs, found dogs, “Why did they close that restaurant?”, “Are they going to pick up the trash over the holiday weekend?”…..you know……just folks doing life and talking about it on the internet. The frequency in which I visited this group would’ve remained…..well….infrequent, if it weren’t for a small discovery I made one afternoon while perusing the posts of my peers. It was on that day that I realized our small slice of suburbia was inundated with killer reptiles of the slithering sort.
I realize my previous statement would be amiss without the tale …or tail, in this case, to support it. Allow me the elaboration. The first time I came across a post requesting some help identifying a snake, everything seemed straight forward. A little black nope rope had found it’s way onto a terrified lady’s patio and she wanted to know whether it was venomous or not. Actually, I’m certain she used the word poisonous instead of venomous, but those two do not mean the same thing. I digress, but look it up if your curiosity gets the better of you. Anyhow, accompanying the request was a photo of said serpent. There were a wide variety of comments from people eager to stretch their own particular aptitude in Herpetology……but most fell into one of the following categories:
- The “kill it dead and burn your own house down” crew . These folks are extreme. You will never, EVER, convince them that some snakes could actually be beneficial to have on their property. They’d rather be carried off by a thousand rodents than fathom the possibility a snake has infiltrated their perimeter.
- The “Cottonmouth/Rattlesnake crowd. If they weren’t so obviously misinformed, assuring you every snake that crawls the Earth (or more to the point, in this neighborhood) is either a Cottonmouth or Rattlesnake, their unwavering commitment might be commendable.
- The “little to no command of the English language” gang. To this day, we’re still not sure what they said.
- The people who actually know what they’re talking about. Ok, there’s only one, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
So, in my visits to this group I started realizing how frequent these snake i.d. posts appeared. Multiple days each week, the masses reached out into the ether with wifi or less than stellar 4g coverage, in hopes of escaping the tyranny of the legless devil-beasts. In the comments, they often tagged a man, a man’s man, knowing he would rescue them from their own ignorance. In the interest of anonymity, I’m going to call this man Cobra Commander.
Now, Cobra Commander, he’s the guy who actually knew what he was talking about. He owned a local wildlife/pest removal service and would always respond with a simple, yet informative comment. “Juvenile Black Racer, non-venomous.” “Banded Water Snake, non-venomous.” “Eastern Diamondback, venemous.” You get the idea. Cobra Commander operated with a cool confidence no amount of misinformation could dissuade. I actually envied his ability to remain calm in the midst of the many, worthy, face-palm moments. He was giving these citizens a free education on the critters that might crawl in their backyard. Some of them, over time, actually learned from it. They digested the wise words of The Cobra Commander because he didn’t dress up the dish with garnish and fluff. He made the information palatable with simplicity. He really was a master at work.
I watched this unfold week after week and even though some still wanted to burn down houses while others “Swore it was a Rattler”, people benefited from the lessons passed on to them by Cobra Commander. A group of “experts” learned from an actual expert. There’s something poetic about that, don’t ya think? -IJ
tune in next week for the third and final part in this series
