Blackfoot news. (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1891-1902, 1894-05-26


Of outside the pale of the snake fan
cier; and the writer, no matter whether
he is believed or not. buoyed up by a
strong moral sense, will go ahead and
tell what he knows about the subject
There are many curious serpents
whose habits and description make in
teresting reading, as, for instance, the
whip snakes of Brazil, the bowling
snakes of the Peruvian Andes, the
hammerheads of California, the spit
ting snakes of South Africa, etc, but
in an article of this kind only a few
can be noticed, and those briefly.
In California there is reptile com
mon to the Sacramento Valley known
generally by the name of blow-snake.
They are about three feet long, spotted
yellow and black, or yellow and dirt
color. Their speciality is blowing and
swallowing hens eggs whole, and they
are consequently enemies to the farm
ers. A full-grown blow-snake thinks
nothing of swallowing half-dozen
eggs at time. There is a novel way
of trapping the egg-beater when he is
trying to get into the chicken house,
which is as follows:
Find the crack or knot-hole through
which he comes in; deposit an egg on
the ground outside close to the aper-
ture and one on the inside where he
can reach it easily. Having bolted the
first egg, the snake reaches his body
through the knot-hole and tuclzs the
~ ns aTs snh h
an egg on either side of the crack, he
is thus securely trapped. He is nom
poisonous, but he makes such a bluff
with his everlasting blowing, which
sounds something like the kissing of a
goose, that he often carries the day
without blow being struck Some
have said that the air exhaled from the
lungs of the blow-snake is a gas of
malignant poison, whitening, scorch-
ing and killing anything it touches;
and this, indeed, would look pretty to
a lover of fiction; but the writer after
having held dog in front of one of
these blowers for two hours without
any effect on the canine, nails the
thing as falsehood and throws it ont.
According to a friend of mine Ia min
lister of TemescaD there is popularity
of this snake worth noticing. If by
any means you can get one in such
shape that he can be severed exactly
in the center-sawed or chopped
divisions will crawl off, the part with
out head keeping up pretty close to
the part without a tail.
II, however, in making the partition
a hairs breadth is swerved from either
way the head part will crawl off, only
eaving the tail division writhing ABOUT
aimlessly. have my own ideas con-
corning these severed parts growing
resh heads and tails when divided
properly, but will not mention here
from the fact that it would take up
too much space to place the hypothesis
in reasonable light before the reader
Quite different type from the above
is the hammerhead of California.
These brisk little fellows live in such
inaccessible places in the mountain
parts that they have escaped observa-
ton altogether till within the last
year. As the popular name implies,
their ambition runs toward hammer
ing or clubbing instead of biting. cut
ting or blowing. The hammerhead is
about twenty-four inches long, the
first three inches of the head and neck
being very heavy, composed of sort
of gristle. The muzzle is blunt and
square and sets against prodigious
muscles running half the length of the
snake.
They are gregarious, and when lot
of them station themselves along the
trail of some wild animal and he comes