The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-04-17
CROP OF RATTLESNAKEs.
An Iowa Man Who Found Them More
Profitable Than Grain Raising.


Several years ago. while travelling in
Iowa, Chicago man happened into set
Element in Tama county, and, while stop
ping there, heard of a rattlesnake ledge
about four miles northeast of the town
that had been pre-empted by a man from
Ohio, says the TImes-Herald. Old Burnt
sons ledge turned out to be all it was paint
ed, and something more 1t was a mile and
half of rotten limestone stratum turned
on edge and sticking out of the prairie 60
feet high, like big quarry that had got
snagged in the middle of a lake. Right on
top of it, in grove of wild fern and dwarf
sycamore, lived old Burnison, in log cab
In he had built for himself about three
years before, when he had pre-empted the
quarter section.
This whole bed of rock. lying in slanting
and crumbling layers. much Of it as crum-
bled old cheese, was literally alive with
rattlesnakes. When l reached the place
old Burnison had settled down to snake
killing a business. He had gradually
=given up all attempts to work his farm
and devoted himself to the ceaseless war
of determination. He said he had killed as
many as so rattlers in day, but they were
"gettin' scary of him now and knew his
STEP Besides, said he: Il amt as anxious
to kill as L was, SEEM as how snakes is a
better payin' crop than corn"
He and his boy must have been at this
about a year it appeared, when some one
wrote to him from Des Moines and offered
Ito pay him for all the rattlesnake poison
she could collect. This set him to work
pulling the fangs of the dead snakes. 1t
was difficult and tedious work. but he sue
ceeded i'll getting together vial of the
venom and sent it to his correspondent,
with complaint that it didn't pay to
"gether' It,
What was his surprise to receive in an
sWer lengthy letter from Chicago firm,
for which the Des Moines correspondent
was only an agent, thanking him for the
virus and renting SO, with specific in
Structions how to 'Xether'' the poison with
out so much rroub3e. He was to pull the
fang before the snake was killed and while
his mouth was open. s"Of course" said
the letter, you can't very we'll do it after
the sanke is dead. because the fang is
folded back and hiddenfin the folds Of the
maxillary gland. We send you by express
to our Des Moines agent a pair OF forceps
specially constructed for this work, which
we furnish to our agents.
Here the old man got up and brought
long handled steel instrument of the most
delicate workmanship, Iand 1 accompanied
him and his boy to show it worked. We
had not gone hundred feet through the
plum grove before we heard the rattle of
a snake, and the boy, oturning aside into
the bush, found his victim coiled, with his
head up, and in half a3minute he had his
forked stick ovel the neck of the animal,
and the old man had the instrument fast
ON the little white fang that hung down
visibly in his open mouth q
With a deXterous jerk the fang and the
venom bag together came out unbroken,
and, after crushing the head of the SER
pent with his boot, he laid the trophy in
the palm of his hand for me to look at
Afterwards he showed a little box
with glass stoppered Walls laid in cotton,
which the Chicago firm had also sent him.
He told me that he making a good
deal more money by the snakes than he
could "outen". his crops.
I bought a vial of the viscid fluid from
old Burnison and kept it for a long time
for experiments, ultimately passing it over
to DR.. DOremuS