When you come to a passage in the Bible that you don't understand (such as a talking snake)?

what do you do? Do you do some research, try to understand whether that is a passage that is to be taken literally or metaphorically or as a parable? Or do you just trust your own first impression and decide that you are wiser than the generations before you who did so, wiser than the pope, smarter than all of those theology and history and Bible professors who do indeed understand it and then discard it?