An excerpt from the Windward Road by Archie Carr reminds me of L., our Everglades wading bird project supervisor who truly has an uncanny ability to identify snakes, dead or alive, while driving 55 mph on Tamiami Trail...at night.
Archie Carr, 1956. "...I shall not try to make you believe that this set of circumstances - this fragment of action out there on the open seabeach - meant snake to me. But it meant something. It must have, or I should not have stopped. And maybe it did mean snake. When you have keyed your senses to searching for snakes through as long a time as I have, you acquire an eye for them that seems to the unversed to border on the occult. You not only learn to tell a snake on the road from a perfectly snake-like piece of cast tire bead, but with no conscious effort you snatch details of color, pattern, and form and make split-second identification of species when a layman is still insisting it was a twist of orange peel you passed, or a dead cat. This is one of the refinements of a specialized calling. Until you have looked for snakes on the road, dead snakes or live ones, nighttimes or by day, at slow speeds in fair weather or fast in the rain, for years and years - well, there are reflexes in this world that you never dreamed of."
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