collector?

[Ron Gatrelle]

For most of my life I have referred to myself as a lepidopterist. When the
ole boys got together and formed a "Society" they called it the
Lepidopterists' Society - that is, a society of lepidopterists. Most people
had no idea what that was of course, or what we were doing out in their
woods and bogs. So when asked we would say, " we are... collecting
butterflies."   "Ohhhhhhh"  the masses relpied, with a squint in their eye
and a nod of their head -- meaning "Do what?"

We knew what we were, lepidipterists, of course - finding, identifying,
classifying, rearing, dissecting, corresponding, drawing, photographing,
publishing, meeting, conserving, teaching - yah, lepidopterists.
Eventually, somewhere along the line, it finally clicked in the masses'
head,  "Oh! They are -collecting-!"  They finally understood. Sure.
Collecting - stamp collecting, coin collecting, doll collecting, antique
collecting, bottle collecting - butterfly col-lec-ting.  (Of course they
were actually still clueless.)

 But now they new what we were doing. "Hey." They would now say. "How much
you get for those things?" (Collectors collect stuff just so they can sell
it. They -knew- that much.)   We would just say, "Oh, not much." and hope
they would now just leave us alone. But no so. "What ya lookin' for?"  We
would try to describe a morpho to an Iowa farmer and he would say, "Oh, we
get those around here all the time.  Yup, all the time."

Well, after all these decades I can say that "they" still don't know what a
lepidopterist is or what one is all about. But they have butterfly
collectors down pat - just ask ____. Yup, collectors = killin, sellin,
lowlifes.  They don't do nothin', don't contribute nothin'. We don't need
em, we don't want em.


 
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