The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1904-06-04

eat for weeks. The harmless, or non-
poisonous, snakes, or many of them,
become more or less docile after a
time, and some of them become very
tame, and will come to the door of
their cage when it is opened and take
food from the hand. The majority
of them come in time to eat regularly
when properly fed.
The poisonous snakes, on the other
hand, besides being nervous when
first confined, are also fierce and COM
bative, and they are never tanned.
They keep to themselves and never
soften, but are ready to strike and
are dangerous always. And to their
nervousness at first the poisonous
snakes add a sort of fierce sensitive
ness that makes them reject any food
that does not have about it the wild
odor of nature and they never come
to feed so well as the non poisonous
snakes.
A rattlesnake, when first brought
in, will not touch rat that has been
kept indoors. The odor of such rat
is offensive to this deadly snake. So
rat designed for this rattlesnake's
1000 IS KcPv vOsst-~e-1>Ase for a time
on the ground, to give it a raturaf
scent.
Then the rat is brought to the cage
and killed quickly and thrust in.
The rattler, facing the other way,
perhaps, is touched. It turns to
strike, sees the rat, and sensing it
with the smell of outdoors about it,
strikes and swallows It.
But rarely can food be simply
thrown into the glass-fronted cases in
which the snakes are confined and
left for them to eat. The food must
be fed to the snakes with care, and
often they must be enticed to eat by
placing the food before them tempt
ingly.
Something that they like is ad-
vanced to them on a stick to where
they can smell it, or as in the case of
the venomous snakes, they are en-
couraged to strike at it, and other
wise prompted to take or seize upon
it. And this all takes time and care
and patience, and, as Mr.. Ditmars
will tell you, to get the snakes to feed
requires a friendly and sympathetic
feeling toward them on the part of
the man feeding them.
Not every man can make snakes
eat, and it may take men accustomed
to the work and interested in it, hours
to feed the serpents in two or three
cages. The feeding is done after the
park has been closed for the day.
The serpents are fed on an average
three times a month. On one day
those in two or three cages are fed,
and on the next day those in two or
three other cages, and so the round
of the cages is made, returning to
begin again with the first every ten
days.
---.--.s-aas---~y zs-,--sr~.--g,-
two-foot python that had taken
no food for nine months, and finally
number of rabbits were attached end
to end to a twelve-foot bamboo pole;
and then while many men held this
tremendously powerful serpent the
pole with the rabbits attached was
thrust down its throat.
And some, after all, may starve, as
did once an interesting python about
eight feet in length, one of the species
that snake charmers handle and twist
around their necks. This was very
tame and friendly python, harmless
except for its power of construction.
It would take food from the hand and
enjoyed being handled, and when
taken up it would coil around the
body of the man holding it and nestle
its head against him. 1t had been
owned by snake charmer.
This python, after the closing of
the reptile house at the end of the
day, was permitted to have the free
dom of the serpent section of the
building, and it would come crawling
into the curator's Office, then coil it
self up comfortably in a corner of the
room. Sometimes it would come
over and crawl up on the curator's
chair as he sat at his desk, and twist
itself around an arm of the chair, and
it might coil itself around the curator's
body and rest its head against him
as he sat there writing. This was
friendly and most interesting py-
thon, but it would take food from
no one save the curator and the one
keeper who regularly fed it. And
there came time when the curator
and this keeper were both i'll at once,
and when nobody could bring this
python to feed; and then it simply
starved to death.-N. r. Sun.