The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1904-10-20
The Cabbage Sea Serpent.

Ihe Cabbage Sea Serpent.
/ EDITOR REPORTER-That article read
in your last issue about the cabbage
snake is enough to make one shiver.
The farmers most always congratulate
themselves for knowing what they eat,
and that the jams, jellies, kraut, etc.,
they prepare themselves from their own
orchards and gardens are wholesome
and healthful. But that cabbage snake
story from Grand River is good one.
DR.. Bone might have placed that worm
or snake in his stomach pump and pump
ed it down the cat and got better re-
suits than by putting the cat in hot
box, where it's own animal heat made it
hotter for the meat which sweltered for
three days and perhaps became contain
mated with ptomaine poison enough to
kill the cat without the use of the
snake. We have heard in Decatur that
the cabbage snake was the size of
horse hair, two inches long, twelve feet
long, and 400 feet in length with head
like snake or bull dog. have put up
10S gallons of kraut and have found
around the cabbage heads angle or fish
worms, wire worms, grub worms, cut
worms and the regular green cabbage
worms. These worms all left their
mark behind them and were easy to find
and cut out. That snake should be
found the same way. This snake story
If true is dangerous. Some cabbage
without snakes in it is dangerous to eat,
because people put on the cabbage to
kill the ordinary cabbage worm, lye,
sulphur, ashes, plaster paris, cayenne
pepper and Paris Green, some of them
rank poison, and it would surely kill if
the cabbage is eaten, as the poison
would enter into the sap of the cabbage.
"A gentleman in Decatur found a cabbage
snake about six inches long and pointed
at both ends, and about the size of
wheat straw in the middle. On close
investigation it proved to be piece of
buckskin twisted to resemble cabbage
snake. A lady in Decatur asks how
piece of buckskin could be found in the
center Of a cabbage head. A gentleman
in Leon found cabbage snake in a
head Of cabbage and it proved to be
one of the tendons out of chickens
neck. This chicken may have passed a
cabbage head and a cabbage snake snap
ped its head off and drew chicken head
and all in the cabbage head. / hear
that the farmers are throwing their
kraut all out and feeding their cabbage
to the cows. That carries the snake to
the milk. Hogs and chickens die with
cholera and we all eat hogs and chick
ems. Why not knock them all in the
head? Another gentleman in Leon
found a cabbage snake 8 feet long but
it was so small he could not see it. The
potato bugs in Kansas eight years ago
were burned up in the cook stove and
the fumes from the bugs killed the
whole family. Several years ago the
kissing bug stung people to death.
That little black bug is around kissing
people yet and it's kisses are very pain
full. 1t is strange that we are not all
dead long before that cabbage sea SER
pent was discovered, for the reason that
when we drink glass of beautiful
orange soda it contains bensoic acid,
coal tar dye, and no orange extract A
fluid labeled pure lemon extract is made
of deadly poison, wood alcohol and anil
inc dye, and no lemon extract whatever.
Lard is chiefly tallow, butter mostly
oleomargarine, vinegar is acetic acid
colored with burnt sugar, cayenne pep
per is little capsicum and great deal
of nut shells ground fine and colored
with aniline dye. This ingredient is
sprinkled on cabbage. Jellies and jams
are any old thing from a pumpkin to
apple sauce mixed with timothy seed
and colored with aniline dye. This is
all bad for the stomachs of those who
have to consume this combination of
poisonous nastiness under the name of
commercial food. l have examined
about forty heads of cabbage and ex-
! pected in the very next head [ would
find the cabbage serpent. If do not
find it soon will look for it on the next
freight. hope there is no cabbage
snake, but if so, let us be careful.
G. r. RILEY.
i Decatur City, Iowa, Oct. 18th.
u Lulu Stanhope, st. Louis: II used to
have horrid complexion. took Hol-
II lister's Rocky Mountain Tea and am