St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1889-08-08
THE RATTLESNAKE.

from a pTOfuSely illustrated art1cle
by DR.. S. Weir Mitchell on "The Poi,
son of Serpents' in the August Cen
tury, we quote the following: Let
us observe what happens when the
rattlesnake means mischief He
throws himself into a spiral, and
about one-third of his length, carry
ing the head, rises from the coil and
stands upright. The attitude is fine
and warlike, and artists who at
| tempt to portray it always fail. He
does not pursue, he waits. Little an
inals he scorns unless he is hungry,
SO that the mouse or the toad he
leaves for days unnoticed in his cage.
Larger or noisy creatures alarm him.
Then his head and neck are thrown
far back, his mouth is opened very
wide, the fang held firmly erect, and
with an abrupt swiftness, for which
his ordinary motions prepare one but
little, he strikes once and is back on
guard again, vigilant and brave.
The blow is a stab, and is given by
throwing the head forward while the
half-coils below it are Strengthened
out to lengthen the neck and give
power to the motions which drive
the fangs into the opponents flesh;
as they enter, the temporal muscle
closes the lower jaw on the part
struck, and thus forces the sharp
fang deeper in. 1t is a thrust aided
by bite. At this moment the poi
son duct is opened by the relaxation
of the muscle which surroundsit, and
the same muscle which shuts the jaw
squeezes the gland and drives it's ven
ON through the duct and hollow
fang into the bitten part.
In so complicated series of acts
there is often failure. The tooth
strikes on tough skin and doubles
back or fails to enter or the serpent
misjudges distance and falls short
and may squirt the venom four or
five feet in air, doing no harm. l had
a curious experience of this kind, in
which a snake eight feet six inches
long threw teaspoonful or more of
poison athwart my forehead. 1t
missed my eyes by an inch or two.
| have had many near escapes, but
this was the grimmest of all. An
inch lower would have cost me my
sight and probably my life.
A snake will turn and strike from
any posture, but the coil is the atti-
tude always assumed when possible.
The coil acts as an anchor and ena-
bleS the animal to shake its fang
loose from the wound. A snake can
rarely strike beyond half his length.
If both fangs enter the hurt is dOublv
dangerous, because the dose of ven
ON is doubled. AT times fang is
left in the flesh, but this does not
trouble the serpent's power as a poi
sOner, since numberless teeth lie ready
to become firmly fixed in its place,
and both fangs are never lost togeth-
er. The nervous mechanism which
controls the act of striking seems to
be in the spinal cord, for if we cut off
a snakes head and then pinch its
tail, the stump of the neck returns
and with some accuracy hits the
hand of the eXperimenter-ifh he has
the nerve to hold on Few men have.
| have not. A little Irishman who
took care of my laboratory astonish-
ed me by cOOlly sustaining this test
He did it by closing his eyes and so
shutting out for moment the too
suggestive view of the returning
stump. Snakes have always seemed
to me averse to striking, and they
have been on the whole much ma
ligned.
Any cool, quiet person, moving
slowly and steadily may pick up and
handle gently most venomous ser
pents. l fancy, however, that the vi
pers and cnPPerheade uncertain
pets. Mr.. Thompson, the snake
keeper at the Philadelphia Zo-ologi-
cal, handles his serpents with impu-
nifty; but one day having dropped
some little moccasins few days old
down his sleeve while he carried their
mamma in his hand, one of the ba-
bies bit him and made an ugly wound.
At present the snake staff is used to
handle snakes.
l saw one October, in Tangiers,
what l had long desired to observe
a snake charmer. Most of his snakes
were harmless but he refused, with
well-acted horror, to permit me to
take hold of them. He had also two
large brown vipers; these he handled
with care, but | saw at once that
they were kept exhausted of their
venom by having been daily teased
into biting on a bundle of rags tied
to a stick. They were too tired to
be dangerous. l have often seen
snakes in this state. After three or
four fruitless acts of instructive use of
their venom they give up, and seem
to become Indifferent to approaches,
and even to rough handling"