The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1889-12-27
THE RATTLESNAkE.
How Its Deadly Blows Are Delivered and
It's Venom Injected.


How Its Deadly Blows Are Delivered and
It's Venom Injected.
Let us observe what happens when
tba rattlesnake means mischief. He
throws himself into spiral, and about
one-third of his length. carrying the
head, rises from the coil and stands
upright The attitude is fine and war
like, and artists who attempt to por-
tray it always fail. He does not pur-
sue, he waits. Little animals he scorns
unless he is hungry, SO that the mouse
or the toad he leaves for days unnoticed
1 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 pre-
pare 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 center, 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 poison
duct is opened by the relaxation of the
muscle which surrounds it. and the
same muscle which shuts the jaw
squeezes the gland. and drives its
venom 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 mis-
judges distance and falls short and
may squirt the venom four or five feet
in the air, doing no harm. l had q
curious experience of this kind in
which a snake eight feet six inches
long threw a teaspoonful or more Of
poison athwart my forehead. 1t missed
my eyes by an inch or two. l 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 en-
ables the animal to shake its fangs
loose from the wound. A snake can
rarely strike beyond half its length.
Ii both fangs enter, the hurt is doubly
dangerous, because the dose of venom
is doubled. AT times fang is left in the
flesh, but this does not trouble the SER
pent's powers as a poisoner, since num-
berless teeth lie ready to become firm
ly fixed in its place. and both fangs are
never lost together. 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 ac-
curacy hits the hand of the ex-
perimenter-if he has the nerve to
hold on. Few men have. l have not
A little Irishman who took care of my
laboratory astonished me by coolly sus-
tanning this test. He did it by closing
his eyes and so shutting out for u mo-
ment the too suggestive view of the re-
turning stump. Snakes have always
seemed to me averse to striking, and
they have been on the whole much
maligned.
Any cool, quiet person moving slow
ly and steadily may pick up and
handle gently most venomous serpents.
l fancy, however. that the vipers and
the copperheads are uncertain pets
Mr.. Thompson, the snake-keeper at
the Philadelphia Geological, handles
his serpents with impunity; but one
day. having dropped some little moe
casins few days old down his sleeve
while he carried their mamma in his
hand, one of the babies 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 we'll
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 hav-
ing been daily teased into biting on a
bundle of rags tied to stick. They
were too tired to be dangerous. I have
often seen snakes in this state. After
three or four fruitless acts of instinct
i've use of their venom they give up,
and seem to become Indifferent to APP
proaches. and even to rough handling.
DIR. G. Weir Mitchell, in Century.