In Retrospect, I Kind of Blame the People of the Mountain

So many years ago, back in the halcyon age before the Internet (and computers for that matter...) I had a grade school teacher who was a bit of a hippie. 

Regularly at school assemblies he would bring his guitar and we would all sing songs along the line of 'If I Had a Hammer', and 'Leaving on a Jet Plane', with the lyrics written on huge sheets of white paper in the front of the school gymnasium. 

One of Mr. Case (for that was his name)'s standards was 'One Tin Soldier'. For those unfamiliar with the song in question, you can review it here*

*As presented in The Legend of Billy Jack**

**I'm not going to even attempt to explain The Legend of Billy Jack

Now, the song is a pretty straightforward 70s peace anthem swaddled in vaguely Tolkien-esque middle-ages village imagery*

*If you could fit the entire 70s into a giant stock pot and let it boil for a very long time, it would eventually reduce to something not unlike the song 'One Tin Soldier'

So the basic story is this - We have the Mountain people who supposedly have a 'treasure'. We also have the Valley people who live next door and would very much like to swing by and borrow a cup of treasure. The Valley people send a polite note requesting the treasure, the mountain people send a deliberately vague note back, and so the valley people slaughter the mountain people and discover that the treasure is, in actual point of fact, the words 'Peace on Earth', which are for some reason know only to the mountain people hidden under a rock.

Now, as a kid I readily accepted that this was a story about bad valley people who killed their neighbors, but looking back on it now I can't help but think that the Mountain people have to take at least some of the blame for the whole situation. I mean, I don't want to blame the victim here, but let's take a look at how easily the whole situation could have been cleared up by having the following simple conversation-

VALLEY PEOPLE

 Hey, we've heard you have a bunch of treasure. 

The 411 is that it's tons of gold. We'd like you to give it to us.

 FYI, we're totes willing to kill for it.

MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

I'm sorry, what?  We couldn't hear you over our enormous beards

VALLEY PEOPLE

Your tons of golden treasure.  Please give it to us. 

MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

Oh... I totally see where the miscommunication here is.  

We don't actually have literal treasure like gold or silver or anything like that.  

When we say treasure we're talking about a 

metaphoric representation of peaceful coexistence.  

VALLEY PEOPLE

You what now?

MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

 We wrote the words 'Peace on Earth' under a rock. See?  Look, you can totally see it.

VALLEY PEOPLE

Why would you even do that?

MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

It's ... like.. a metaphor.

VALLEY PEOPLE

Why did you put it under a rock?

MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

Because shut up, that's why.

VILLAGE PEOPLE

Why are we even a part of this conversation?

VALLEY PEOPLE

Oh CHRIST, not them again.  Screw this, we're going home.

See?  Totally cleared the situation up and nobody had to get slaughtered even a little bit.

Honestly, it's like the Mountain People wanted to get wiped out.

So THAT's why the Hellbender Salamander is always in the bathroom...

Yesterday I was listening to MPR (pretentious dog flag - I should create a tag for that...) and heard a news item about the Hellbender Salamander, a subspecies known as Cryptobranchidae that grows to over two feet in length.

What immediately caught my attention about the piece was a casual mention of the fact that the Hellbender Salamander is more commonly know by its nickname... wait for it...

The Snot Otter.

Which officially edges out 'Carlos Danger' for this weeks Best.  Nickname.  EVER.*

*As a curious coincidence, they are also both popular nicknames for 17 year old boys to give to their genitalia...

The actual point of the news article - which was, surprisingly, interesting enough to distract me from the phrase 'Snot Otter' - was that environmental biologists have fairly recently discovered a way to track the presence of various species through DNA evidence in local ground water.

I know, right??

It all started with an effort to prove the existence of bullfrogs in a particular pond.  Scientist took a water sample from the pond, analyzed it for DNA from that species of Bullfrog, found said DNA and proclaimed, 'Yup, they's bullfrogs heyah'.

This segued into a discussion of hos the technology had been adapted to identify the existence of the Hellbender Salamander in areas of the Ozarks where it was thought to have died out - at which point I lost track of the discussion because I had just heard the words 'Snot Otter' and my brain needed a moment to process that much joy.

When I regrouped enough to rejoin the discussion, they were talking about how it was a particularly good time to identify the Snot Otter, as it was their mating season and...

You're going to need to take a moment to prepare for this...

No...seriously...

Just take a moment...

To quote NPR directly - 'In mating season, the Hellbender Salamander sloughs off a large amount of DNA'

I don't know about you, but that is not what I called it back in high school...

And so, world, allow me to gift you with this new euphemism for your personal gentleman time-

'Tracking the Snot Otter'

You're welcome, Planet.