The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-07-20
THE RATTLER'S VIRTUES
ONE OF THEM rs IN ABILITY no
DEVELOP LATENT GENIUS.

snake Country n Proof of This Enter
fainment Provided for Natives.
i have noticed peculiar thing about
rattlesnakes," said Simon Kent of Clin-
ton county Pennsylvania, land that is
that If I'm trout fishing and the trout
are biting good / am always sure of
running across all the rattlesnakeS any
ratlesnake hunter would care to find in
q days foraging for them; but if the
trout are not biting / won't run across
a RATHER maybe all day. l don't know
why 1T Is, of course, any more than l
know why it is that there are always
rattlesnakes where there are trout and
huckleberries and that there is never
malaria where you find that combina-
ton Of reptile, fish and fruit. Instead
of a localtys being Stunned because
rattlesnakes abound there, it should be
just the place for people to seek, be-
cause wherever rattlesnakes are found
there you will find a healthful region.
am speaking now of our own brilliant
the lazy, overgrown, vindictive RATHER
Of Florida and Texas. Wherever you
find an overcheerful RATHER giving forth
his music and telling you to watch out,
there you will find the purest water,
the freshest air. the dryest, highest
land. AS long as you live in country
where you have to kick a RATHER off
your doorstep every now and then you
needn't be afraid of chills and fever
sneaking across your threshold.
Clinton county used to be the finest
region for rattlesnakes that any one
could have found in a years search. l
can remember when the wild meadows
along some of the creeks in the higher
parts of the county were so lively with
them that the sounding of their ratles
as yout made your way through was
like the whirring on summer day of
field full of the big locusts we call the
grasshopper. l was somewhat of
gatherer of rattlers in those days, as
their oil was, and is now, greatly in de-
mand, and one day, in going across
meadow along Youngwomen' Creek,
bagged thirty-nine nice, fat fellows that
yielded an average of SO apiece. That
was before the days that rattlesnake
skins had become commercially valua-
BILE, or SIS snake would have been a
low yield for that trip across the mead
ow. 1t used to be 50, in the Ledy
neighborhood, particularly, that farm
err counted as much on the crop of rat
tiers he might gather while cutting his
hay as he did on the hay crop. But
there has been a lamentable decrease in
rattlesnakes in the county in the past
ten years. and the backWoods natives
are not little worked up over it. They
believe that all the prescriptions that
have been put up since Adam had his
rib healed and every ointment that was
made since Aaron had his beard oiled
can't compare with rattlesnake oil
when cure-all is wanted. particularly
for rheumatism. So they view the pros
pectof possible rattlesnake-oil drought
with no little alarm.
Sometimes I think that the decrease
in rattlesnakes up our way is due large
ly to the big blacksnakes that have their
home in the Black Forest region north
of us, but which have been coming
down in the rattlesnake domain of late
years to forage. Those blacksnakes are
not anything to wonder at if they are
not ten feet long. / read in one of our
local newspapers of an old resident
driving along one of the mountain roads
in the upper part of the county, accom-
panied by his two daughters, Suddenly
the horse stopped and tried to turn
around in the road. The old resident
him up, but he refused to go
forward and began to rear and plunge.
of ~ r.,, .1c oh
saw a huge blacksnake lying in the
road. She alighted and took the horse
by the head, while her father jumped
out, got a club and started to kill the |
snake The snake did not wait to be
killed, but came rapidly forward to
meet the man, with it's head raised two |
feet above the ground, and kissing like |
a steam valve. The old gentleman |
swung his club and caught the snake a
blow on the neck that knocked the rep |
tile flat, and couple of whacks on the
head with the club killed it, so far as its
power for harm went, but the thrashing
about of its long body continued for five
minutes after the head was smashed.
That choice specimen of the Black For
est blacksnake measured nearly twelve
feet.
"These blacksnakes entertain a dead
" hostility to our rattlesnakes and are
hunting them up. The in
slant one of these reptiles strikes the
trail of q RATHER it follows it like q
hound does a deer, and the doom of that
'attIer is sealed. The blacksnake is as
much quicker than rattlesnake as a
ace horse is quicker than canal mule
md the consequence is that much time
1oes not elapse after a blacksnake
ackles rattler until there is one less
'attler to give forth music to the trout
fisherman and the huckleberry picker,
Ind provide profit for the snake-oil
,atherer.
I'VE have an enterprising citizen in
me of our bigger towns who has pc
,uliar weakness for rattlesnake collect
ng, and he is a great admirer of that
particular reptile. He used to get lots
# fun out Of them, and does yet once
n a while If he can get hold of a stran-
ger in town. He keeps store, and it is
favorite diversion of his to lure people
nto the store ostensibly to show them
ONE pretty or curious new things he
,as put in stock, and then, while the
-isitors are intent on examining them,
q turn loose in the room two or three
lively rattlesnakes, a collection of which
lie always has on tap, so to speak In
he scramble and commotion that en-