Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1903-03-16


orld has nal a certain sense of pity
fol- those geographical sections tha
have been denied snakes among theil
fauna. In the absence of these
reptiles one of the greatest incentives
to artistic lying is impossible. A man
who will tell the truth about his
largest fish will lie about snakes as
long as he can sit up. If there are
no snakes in his island, however, he
has got to hustle for his fiction.
1t is this mingling of truth and
fiction about reptiles that has made
the reputation of several seaside re-
sorts, and caused most people to
have nervous chiils every time they
walk in grass that is up TO their shoe
tops.
AS a matter of fact, it is not an
/ easy matter for one to get bitten by
! a poisonous snake in those countries
that make a specially of them. While
many poisonous species will not run
from man, most of them will get out
of his way if he moves slowly through
their haunts. Few of these venomous
snakes are found where the ordinary
person expects them. A man having
to cross a weedy ravine will race
through il with a chill chasing up his
spine, and stop Greatness on the
other bank were a rattlesnake or a
coppernead may be coiled, summing
/ himself.
The naturalist has done a great
deal toward clearing up the fictions
| that once masqueraded as facts re
garding serpents. Time was when
nearly every hunter and woodsman
I had seen the wonderful hOopsnake
which, when alarmed, seized it's tail
/ in it's mouth, bent into hoop form,
and went rolling up and down hill
with the ease of an automobile tire.
| The whipsnake was another freak
of the imagination. IL was supposed
TO represent the slender outlines of
the long, plated whip of the stage
driver, and its skin markings also
were supposed to carry out the decep-
ton until a man with a worn whip
lash might easily get down from the
box TO pick up one of these snakes
lying in the road.
The joint snake was another &C
cepted myth. When struck with a
stick or stone it was supposed TO fly
into minute sections, just as a shat
tered icicle might do Then when
the aggressor was gone it was sup
! posed that these pieces of the reptile,
urged by some unconscious attraction
and affinity, began moving toward the
head section, where they coupled in
order of place, and in comparatively
! few minutes the reptile would move
off as if nothing had happened.
Not less exaggerated than these
are the stories of big" snakes that
once were peculiar to every rural
lneighborhoOd. These fictions are
dying out, however. Scientists have
disputed that snakes forty feet long
and as big around the middle as a
| beer key are possible to the tenn
perate regions of the United States,
and they have stuck to the statement
until the rural Joe Mulhatton has had
to seek other fields of endeavor.
! In the same way the sea serpent"
has been counted out. Stories from
Atlantic resorts twenty-five years ago
were of serpents seen off shore with
horrid heads twelve or fifteen feet
above the water and swimming
faster than an ocean liner. Affidavits
have been made to these sights.
Then the joke-writers took up the
subject. Scientists disputed the idea
of such monsters. Some of them
went on to acknowledge the excuse
for such stories by showing that
ducks or other waterfowl, swimming
in line, with sinuous waves running
under them, might easily give the
impression to a startled observer.
But today the "sea serpent" is
extinct The most credulous would
not go twenty-five miles to a resort
for the prospects of seeing one.
OF the snakes which do not belong
to the realms of fiction and strong
drink there are nearly $500 species
classified by naturalists. The limit
of their distribution in Europe has
been fixed as south of the fifty-fourth
degree in British Columbia; the
fortieth parallel in the southern
hemisphere is fixed as the southern
limit.