Poems, Science

We Are Not Snakes!

38 Comments

Biologists in California have discovered some new legless lizards living in a few very specific areas, most notably at the end of a runway at the airport – LAX. These previously unknown creatures spend most of their lives underground and a very small area, and may have eyelids and ear holes, which are just a few of the tiny details that distinguish them from their more familiar writhing cousins.

Legless_Lizard

We amateurs would call them snakes anyway, because up to this point most of us didn’t know there could be a non-snake with a that distinctly snakey look – all wriggly and appendage-free.

For some reason, the notion of legless lizards at LAX made me consider the trials facing these unfortunate creatures – they spend their lives in the area the size of a small tabletop at the end of a runway that launches countless humans riding mammoth rumble-machines into exciting far-flung journeys.

So bleak – rather like living without money in South Minneapolis.
Envy is a possibility, not that there is an option to wriggle on board. “Legless Lizards on a Plane” is a bad idea for a movie on a number of levels, not the least of which is the amount of dialog it would take to repeatedly explain that they are not snakes.

So I decided they need a limerick.

The no-legged lizards at LAX
watched the planes pass while flat on their backs.
With each flight that occurred
They were profoundly stirred
with each tooth shaken free of its plaques.

Where’s the loudest place you ever lived?

38 thoughts on “We Are Not Snakes!”

  1. lifes what you make it you poor legless lizzard
    lax aviod traumas like a minnesota blizzard
    but somtimes lifes the dregs
    and yours without legs
    teach that you shouldnt have pissed off that wizard.

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  2. i lived in a guy house in the 70’s with stereos as the primary furniture. overstuffed chairs and bongs were there but never without music cranked to the max. the traffic outside on portland went from early morning to late at night and at night even after the traffic slowed it was the primary route for all emergency vehicles. the front picture window had speakers on either side and the emerson lake and palmer, yes and fleetwood mac pour freely.
    my wife grew up under the flight pattern at ohare. every morning at 601 the planes began to land 27 seconds apart.the went until 10:00 at night. i laughed as they sat on the patio on the back out the house and had to raise their voices every time the landing gear lowered overhead.(they were right at the spot in the landing process wher the pilot must have hit the button to lower the gear so in addition tho the sound of the plane landing you got that added sund effect of the gear opening and adding that peculiar whistle. just before they moved the ohare folks paid to have it sound insulated. the new owners cant experience the basement wake up to the whistling sound of a 747 in the morning. thats what my wife thinks is home.

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      1. those guys loved their rock and roll.i was in my miles davis mode and thought bob seeger should be shot for productng the exact same thing as everyone else. i like emerson lake and palmer i like yes and i like fleetwood mac. i like the guys i roomed with but 24/ 7 of all of the above was too much. i was trying to get my homework done, figure out my place in the world and make all the decisions that would be with me a lifetime. look what happenns when you get distracted

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  3. Good morning. When I move to S.Minneapolis I will have to put up with noisy air traffic. The noise there will not be too bad because the house we are moving to is not under any of the routes that planes take leaving the airport. We probably have more noise here in Clarks Grove because we only about a half mile away from I35. Also we are only a few blocks away from a train track with trains running on it several times a day. The noise from the trains and the highway do not bother us very much. The loud motorized equipment and vehicles used by our neighbors are a bigger problem. Especially the motor cycles.

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    1. it reminds me of the people who for years have had a nice quiet lake place where sitting out in the year provided all the meditative quality life could offer. then jet skis… little whining mosquitoes that buzz and circle for hours and there are usually two or more to contend with at a time. they turn a relaxing loll in the hammock into a shoulder pinching twitch that makes you wonder what the guidelines on sound pollution should be. 100 decibles is the spot where the law kicks in but there are annoying sounds that can drive you nuts at a lower volume level. bass rumble you feel through your teeth and white sound that block out all other sounds are tow of my least favorite. when the car 20 feet away at the stop light has a bass loud enough to drown out my solitude its a problem. i guess the problem is it is only a problem for me.

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    2. its funny how the sound of the exhaust system is open for choice. the mazda miata was a car that was searching for an identity when it was introduced years ago, i remember hearing a show about how they got the whole car developed and loved it but thne had a heck of a time selecting the muffler. the one they went with was kind of non descript. masseratti and ferrari choose wonderful purring sound. gm has a new thing with trucks and corvettes that sound like inboard motor boats. harley davison chooses loud and offensive to my ears. the exhaust on my bmw motorcycle is very tame and refined in comparison. it never occurred to me that the sound of a piece of equipment was selected but there is a great deal of fine tuning that can be done to alter it on direction or the other. wouldnt it be interesting to hear a sound selection option on all the vehicles that surround us?
      http://www.audionetwork.com/sound-effects/transportation/vehicles/motorcycles-scooters-mopeds-vespas/suzuki-racer-and-ducati-916/results.aspx

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    3. Jim, I’m starting to think you are doing a “Penelope” on us. I’d have to track back, but haven’t you been saying “when I move to S. Minneapolis” since we’re known you?

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  4. Tim (and wife), we share a comparable past.

    Probably the noisiest place I lived was a rooming house at 10th and University in DInkytown. Buses and trucks rumbled by morning through late evening, 35W provided a background din that never stopped, and the cumulative auto traffic on University added to that din.

    Runner-up was living in Roselle, IL. 5 miles west of O’Hare and directly under the double flight path coming in to O’Hare from the west. 27 seconds per flight seems about right. We weren’t so close as to vibrate windows, but when sitting on our deck on many a pleasant evening, we were forced to interrupt conversation every 27 seconds or so until the plane noise subsided.

    To top it off, our house was only a block from a set of railroad tracks upon which ran the METRA commuter trains, as well as a particularly heavy midnight freight train that regularly rattled our windows and shook the house almost daily between 11:30 pm and 12:30 am.

    But I’m of the opinion that all that background noise and ear-splitting roar of planes, trains, buses and trucks makes the pure silence of places like the Boundary Waters all the sweeter and more intense, if that makes sense for silence to be intense.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. yes it does. the spot you describe in roselle il is a mile from my wifes home the same track to the runway. the sound of the boundary waters a couple weeks ago still rings in my ears. it was wonderful

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  5. If I had ever moved into a place that was noisy, I probably would have moved out quickly. I have a low threshold for noise, and it really wears on me.

    There was an apartment I lived in for a few years that was next to a gas station. I was on the fourth floor, so I was a little removed from the worst of the traffic noise. I remember, though, that once a week a big fueling truck would pull into the station at around 5:30 in the morning to fill their storage tanks. I only woke up if the windows were open, though, and it was only once a week.

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  6. Morning all. The loudest place I’ve lived in is my current home, under the pathways of the St. Paul/Minneapolis airport. Although I do have to admit that the new windows upstairs provided by the Airport Noise Commission do actually help enormously during the cold months (when said windows are actually closed).

    There was, however, one very loud night in the KOA campground outside Hayward about 8 years ago. We’ve never stayed there again….

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  7. Morning–
    Well again, I’ve only lived here.
    It got loud at certain times of the year; filling silo was loud, grinding corn was loud, separating baby calves from momma cows was loud for a day and a half… now days cutting grass is about as loud as it gets.

    When Kelly and I were dating, she had a basement apartment in town. Sunday mornings about 7:30 AM is when the grounds keeper cut grass. And his weed eater would come right around her bedroom window where he always seemed to linger.

    On our Honeymoon we went out to the Seattle area and the San Juan Islands. There’s a Navy base on Whidbey Island. About 6AM the Navy jets would start taking off. I think the runway ended about 10′ beyond the headboard…

    Occasionally we get complaints at the township about noise issues. There’s a kid who races motorcycles and his property is next to a residential area. The kid is fairly considerate regarding when he rides. But I got a call the other day from a resident complaining about the noise. Seems he’s an ER doc and works nights and this kid woke him up at 9AM. And the doc wanted to know what our noise ordinance says. Well, regardless of what it says, 9AM would be considered the ‘work day’ and there wouldn’t be limits on noise at that time of day. Doc didn’t really appreciate that– nor was he being the most reasonable about it.

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  8. My room, when I worked in Greenland, was in the airport hotel. It faced the runway which was about about the width of a football field away. But air traffic was sporadic. The big DC8s from Copenhagen and LA landed and took off only two days a week, but helicopters and smaller aircraft used for flights within Greenland and to Iceland were constant. Then there were the huge cargo planes used by the US Air Force which would show up intermittently. Those of us who lived and worked at the hotel learned to sleep right through the din. To this day I’m a heavy sleeper. I routinely sleep through storms of all kinds, car alarms going off in the middle of the night, emergency vehicles blasting through the neighborhood, I sleep through them all. But have a cat make retching noises in the living room, and I’m wide awake instantly!

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  9. I joke (I think I am joking here…) that my neighborhood has a sign up sheet so that the lawn mowing is evenly staggered over the entire weekend during the summer, possibly to punish me for having given over my yard to perennials. I don’t mow. I do occasionally weedwhack. And Ben, having worked some graveyard shift, I do kinda feel your ER doctor’s pain, although not having the good doctor’s chutzpah, I just ground my teeth, I never called anybody.

    But without a doubt, the noisiest place I ever lived was an apartment in New Brunswick, NJ, which also happened to be a story up and next door to some sort of drinking establishment (as in, if I opened the window, I could reach out and touch the neighboring building-not that I ever did that). I’m not sure there actually was a “bar time” in New Jersey at that time, it didn’t seem like it ever really quieted down, except maybe on Sunday morning. And then there was invariably someone holding forth loudly on the pay phone in front of the building about the difficulties of their domestic situation to a somewhat sympathetic in-law.

    Haven’t thought about that place in years. That was also where I found out that one could easily pay more than the rent trying to heat a place with nothing but baseboard heaters and really leaky windows.

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    1. MIG,
      Yes, I understand the good doctor needs his sleep, but just as he said he wears eye shades, perhaps he should wear ear plugs too. The rest of the neighborhood can’t go on hold while he gets his sleep. And that sounds harsh, but, unfortunately it’s true.
      The good doctor went onto say I didn’t want him living here and that it’s my intent he move. I knew I was loosing the battle at that point.

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  10. Like a few of us I’m under the runway paths for the airport. The MAC did work on my house so I’m pretty oblivious unless I’m outside and trying to have a conversation. At block parties, we’ve all learned just to stop talking. At the Minnesota Orchestra Musicians’ concert at Lake Harriet last week, the speakers didn’t seem to know that rule.

    The noisiest place I lived briefly was on a student ship to France my junior year in high school. (I wonder if they have such a thing anymore. It was a no-frills, inexpensive way for students to get to Europe in those days.) Our cabin was down in the bowels of the ship, right next to the engines. So there was a loud roar and no light 24 hours a day. I can sleep through almost anything (or I could pre-kids) so it wasn’t a problem.
    Our destination in France was a summer school in the Midi which is total boondocks. After a number of nights with nonstop noise, it was a SHOCK to go to sleep with ABSOLUTE silence without even the chance of a car going by.

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  11. Hmm… Growing up in Duluth, you really can’t get away from the sound of the bridge signaling the ships for a lift. But I love that sound. Same as the house I live in now…it’s on a cul-de-sac and I’ve got railroad tracks at the end and I enjoy the sounds of the trains going by. Probably the most annoyingly noisy place I lived was my apartment in Oakdale. My windows backed onto a play area and there would be bunches of kids screaming away on a Saturday morning. I don’t mind kids playing but just the out and out screaming and shrieking…that tends to grate on my nerves.

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    1. I too enjoy the sound of trains here, although it’s just twice a day. I wonder how it will be when the light rail line (planned for our back yard) is finished…

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    2. Screaming kids are hard on me too. When I was growing up, screaming was absolutely forbidden; my mom would say “if you scream, someone might think you really needed help.” That must have stuck with me because to this day, when I hear kids screaming outside, I always stop what I doing and listen a little harder to see if it’s just kids playing or kids in distress.

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  12. In today’s Pioneer Press is large article on the front page of some neighbors feuding in New Brighton (of all places). A couple in their seventies have complained about their neighbors, a household of four women, who run an urban farm on their half acre property. In addition to sprawling vegetable gardens, most in raised beds (but this year they have also been experimenting with growing stuff in hay bales), they have 15 laying hens, a dozen quail, a few heritage turkeys, a couple of ducks, and one Serama rooster. The couple in their seventies who have lived in their house thirty years claim that they can no longer use their back yard because of the noise and smell that emanates from the urban farm. It strikes me a funny that us city dwellers contend with whining leaf blowers, lawn mowers and snowblowers, cars with deep bass stereos that our whole house shake, to mention just a few of our city’s charms, with few complaints. I suppose you could argue that you move to New Brighton to escape all that, but to complain over what appears to be a well run urban farm next door, strikes me as bizarre. Make friends, for gods sake, help out and share in the fresh bounty.

    That said, husband complained bitterly when we were vacationing in Jamaica over all the dam roosters intent on getting him out of bed at the crack of dawn.

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  14. Right here and now – for the last two months or so, City of Robbinsdale has been digging up the streets 1 and 2 blocks from us (to the east, across the tracks), apparently part of some Capital Improvement project. Six days a week, from about 7:15 till… well, I still hear them as we speak. It has diminished enjoyment of The Screen Porch, and I just hope and pray they’re not coming to our street NEXT summer.

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  15. Hmm. I am pretty crabby when it is too noisy. For some reason, I have become over sensitive to the way husband eats chips, crackers, nuts, and anything crunchy. I own the problem so i just leave the room and leave him to his crunchings and munchings. Our denstist told me once that husband was a real grinder with his teeth, so maybe he is louder than most.

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  16. having lived in the country for quite a bit of my growing up years, i was used to quiet. when we moved to town (population 1,200), i loved the foghorn sound but couldn’t stand the winter sound of snowmobiles buzzing up and down the alleys. now i live a few blocks from a hospital and the sound of the helicopter that comes and goes can be incredibly loud when i’m trying to sleep with the windows open. and some nights the helicopter seems to come and go about every 15 or 20 minutes. and even though i do not live in a neighborhood that is recognized as being troubled by airplane noise, there are certain times of the day and certain days of the week that it can be quite annoying. i remember that often as i tried to listen to TLGMS, some mornings when i had the windows open the radio was drowned out by the airplanes. my neighborhood also has quite a bit of people and traffic noise – loud music, people yelling or screaming or just talking super loud, cars going too fast, motorcycles, lots of sirens.

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