Let Me Finish by Roger Angell

superstar of his era, almost as famous as Dr. William Beebe, the Aquarium's ubiquitous fish guy. I'd heard Ditmars lecture once, and
had shaken his hand, but could not claim intimate acquaintance. I consoled myself with the reminder that a man of such importance, up to his ears with his expeditions and interviews, could not be expected to hang around the office all the time. In any case, I owned and had just about memorized his
Reptiles of the World,
a glorious, profusely illustrated essential text: the boy snake-owner's Koran and Talmud and Deuteronomy, rolled into one. Kim had his own copy, of course, and our frequent and extended snake conversations consisted largely of exchanged texts and photocaptions that we'd put to mind from this marvelous book, with heavy emphasis on the more lethal-looking or sounding species: the fer de lance; the eyelash viper; the rearfanged African boomslang, which sometimes manifested in bright green; the Gaboon viper, with the longest fangs on record and pale-tan leaf-pattern markings that cunningly mimicked the jungle floor of its equatorial Africa habitat; the unpleasant tic-polonga, of Ceylon; and of course our own diamond-backed rattlesnake, whose species name,
Crotalus horribilis,
popped up repeatedly in our chats.
    The keeper I asked for, I believe, was Ditmars' first assistant, John Toomey, whom I actually had engaged in a few Sunday afternoon conversations as he stood with folded arms beside the door to his sanctum. But no, Mr. Toomey wasn't in today, Kim and I were told. We must have looked stricken because the man at the door, a youngish fellow with an Irish air to him, now opened the door wider and waved us in. "What've you got in the blanket?" he asked. Within minutes, Humphrey was stretched out on a white-topped metal table and the young keeper, bending close,
had plucked off the offending eye-scale with a pair of tweezers and dropped it into my palm. "There you go," he said. "Good idea you came." He asked about Humphrey's age and feeding habits, and made sure that there was always a water dish in his cage. "Excellent specimen," he said, and with our permission eased Humphrey into a snowy white cotton collecting bag and knotted the neck. "Come again" he said, shaking our hands.
    Outside, Kim and I reverted in three seconds from boy scientists to boys, shrieking and cavorting down the paths, dancing past the camels and cassowaries, and whirling Humphrey (in his bag) in circles around our heads. This continued through our homeward bound trip on the subway, where we told the story of our scientific errand again and again to ourselves, laughing in the half-empty train. We were so full of it all that we almost missed our stop at Ninety-sixth Street and only at the last second remembered—somebody yelled after us as the doors were beginning to close—oops, to nip back and grab Humphrey and the family steamer rug, side by side on our seat in the car.
    Â 
    Kim and Roger stop short here in memory, as such unbidden tales often do. With a bit of effort I can look back on these eager, irony-deprived boys—my bygone self and my long-ago school friend—without an attached moral, but still sometimes wonder how these afternoons would play out in a modern production. Quickly it can be seen that any plan for a present day Kim 'n' Rog series—on daytime HBO, say—would run into script difficulties. The Adventure of the Purloined Diaphragm goes into turnaround when Research reminds us that today's boys would have zero interest in Mrs. Atwood's medicine cabinet, having learned all that stuff in a Third Grade Responsible Reproduction Class, with an accompanying instructive video. The ailing snake still holds promise, but the IRT subway scenes are gone, made superfluous by the Net. The two smart kids talk to each other as much as ever but it's by Live Chat or Instant Messaging. They Google up the passing pit viper or anaconda in full color on
whozoo.org
, with accompanying