Bisbee daily review., 1907-07-06
KILLS A RATHER BEFORE HIS
 BREAKFAST
Treasurer Kirkland Goes to Barn, Dispatches a Serpent and Then Attends to Horses Regularly Each Morning,

PHOENIX, July 5.-Territorial Treasurer E. E. Kirkland. who first won a name for himself as a horny handed rancher and COW man up in Kirkland valley, still keeps his mount ain home as a good place to fall back on when he becomes old and de- crepit, tearing coupons off the terri torial bonds, and goes up there oc- ! casionally to keep in touch with local affairs. He went up last Saturday and spent Sunday with the boys on the ranch. coming home with a hand badly lacerated, which he said was i the result of a rattlesnake bite in- flicted by proxy, and it looked the part.
 Mir Kirkland has a barn on the ranch which has been there for a great many years and which is used mainly for the accommodation of the COW ponies and the rattlesnakes on the home place who seek it's shelter 1 in the winter time from the cold and | in the summer time from the heat. MT. Kirkland's usual custom when he goes to the ranch is to pick up a club, | step inside the barn and kill a snake and then go around and greet the | ponies, calling them by name and pat 1 ting their heads. He did as usual last Saturday except that when he went into the barn he saw no snake and was somewhat disappointed. He | began to fear that the boys on the ranch were becoming inhospitable or that his reptile friends had sue cumbed to race suicide, but he went the rounds as usual and was prepar- 1 ing to leave the barn when he spied a little boys saddle on a nail and decided to bring it to Phoenix and make some lad a present of it.
 As he approached the saddle and reached up he heard the old familiar greeting of a husky rattler at his feet and came to a sudden stop, with a | cold chill running up and down a | spinal column that connected his main system with a brow showing a fever heat of 15O degrees. He soon l came out of his trance, got a piece | of board outside and after a quite strenuous combat dispatched the snake, but the ragged edge of the | board left wounds on his hand very like the effect of a serpant's fangs. The most interesting part of the in cident is the observation of Mir Kirk l land concerning the suddenness with which he halted when he heard the snake rattle This is enlarged upon | for the benefit of those who are fol- l lowing the nature studies of certain i great men of the day, the subject in 1 this instance being the human ami nal. MT. Kirkland says it is a com mon thing to hear people teii about | making a sudden jump as soon as | they hear a snake rattle, when tie 1 fact is that the first thing a person does on hearing a Fattler is to come ! to a sudden stop, look around a mo- ment, enjoy a mass meeting of yarie-
 gated pains and cold chills, size up the situation and then jump. Of course this pause is not necessarily length ened into a state of obliyious forget 1 fulEess, nevertheless it is more pro nounced than one would suppose un-
 less he were in the habit of intimate association with rattlesnakes as MT.
 Kirkland is, and had learned to study himself under such circumstances.
 The explanation, says MT Kirkland, is found in two or three facts First is surprise, but it only takes an in-
 stant for one to realize that it is a l fore or not. Mother Nature somehow gave a white man an instinct for rec ogniZtng and understanding the re-
 marks of a rattler, without needing
 a repetition. The next thought is
 what to do and one is just as careful
 about jumping away from it, so he
 seldom moves until he gets his eye
 on the reptile. But the way one does
 jump after thesee preliminaries are at-
 tended to is nothing less than mar
 yeIous.
 Another thing that people should
 know is that rattlesnakes do not al ways rattle for sometimes their music
 boxes are accidentally torn off ana
 they can't. Mir. Kirkland therefore
 suggests that no careful person
 should permit a snake to bite him in
 the belief that he is harmless, merely
 because he did not rattle and if a
 snake with rattles should bite a per.
 son without warning, it is sign that he is not a good rattlesnake and
 should be avoided.
 | These remarks are offered by Mir.
 Kirkland in the interest of science
 but of course they don't have to be
 accepted by those who prefer to in.
 Yestigate for themselves. If anybody
 disagrees with him, especially con.
 corning the pause after the warning
 now is a good time to experiment fol
 the 1907 crop of rattles is at its best
 Novices through are advised not to
 wait too long after the snake rattles
 MT. Kirkland knows a great many
 other thinks about rattlesnakes and
 sidewinders and has had a wide ex
 perience in not being bitten with
 them but this will be enough for the