NOT BEING BIOLOGISTS by trade, let’s defer an explanation to the experts but certainly curiosity had to be piqued when a news report on installing a new bar screen assembly at Rome’s Coosa Water Reclamation Facility involved Johnny Massingill, director of water-pollution control, explaining one reason for the work as being: “We kept getting these big loggerhead turtles tearing up our pumps.”

Well, if those are indeed loggerheads — known to grow up to 400 pounds and primarily considered a sea turtle — then the pumps are the wrong item to worry about. Loggerheads are considered an endangered species.

It is possible the culprits may actually be snapping turtles, a generally smaller species with which loggerheads appear to be easily confused. Those do abound around here.

On the other hand, a Google search turns up mentions, without any detail or explanation, of a considerable loggerhead population being found along one small stretch of the Coosa River in Georgia. Well, the only stretch of the Coosa River in Georgia is entirely in Floyd County, all the rest being in Alabama where it is certainly possible the dam that created Weiss Lake long ago cut off a wandering pair from the sea.

Perhaps a marine expert needs to illuminate the local population about this given that it not unknown for some of them to take a dip in the Coosa.