Page:Hunting and trapping stories; a book for boys (IA huntingtrappings00pric).pdf/127

 among the rocks in a dry and hot canyon. When the meal was over the men lay around smoking awhile. One of the party was stretched at full length on a low rock sunning himself. Suddenly one of the Indian guides slowly stretched out his hand to the nearest rifle and before anyone noticed what was up, he fired. The man on the rock sprang up and found, not a foot from his ear, a large rattlesnake in the throes of death, its head having been shattered by the well aimed shot.

On one occasion some children in California were playing hide and seek in a garden. One little girl went and hid under the low lying branches of a lemon tree. On looking up she saw a big rattler among the leaves just above her head. She screamed in terror; the mother who was close at hand dragged the child out of danger. They found out later that the rattlesnake had a family of young ones close at hand, and so you see one mother was just as anxious as the other.

A piece of good advice to anyone who has occasion to travel in countries where rattlers are numerous is to wear thick woolen stockings and over that heavy leather leggings. Then you are safe if you get bitten; the snake's teeth are not long enough to reach the flesh. A snake, unless it is very large indeed, seldom strikes above the knee.

Farmers often resort to a curious way to rid their places of rattlers. It is well known that pigs will kill and eat snakes whenever they can find them. If the snakes bite the pigs in the fat part of the body it will do them no harm, but see that your pigs are fat. This scheme was tried on Guadalope Island in California but the pigs were of thin, wiry kind and the rattlesnakes cleared them out in no time.

Rattlesnakes are beautifully marked, and are in endless variety of color and pattern. The Diamond Rattlesnake is especially handsome; the skin of this species however soon loses a great deal of its color. The skin of all rattlesnakes is thickish and tough and it is therefore not hard to handle. It can easily be skinned and tanned and made into belts and hat bands.

Nearly every Zoo has a good collection of live rattlers, but they seldom move about so as to give one much of a chance to observe them. The writer one day saw a number of rattlers in the Philadelphia Zoo roused to anger by a dog entering the house, and it was a splendid opportunity to see how the tail worked. It was possible to get within a foot, or so, of it without any danger. Even when wild, rattlers do not appear to be very active. Like all snakes, they can go for months without food, but whether they live to any very great age is not so certain.