GRUESOME “SIGH: 227 
The favourite food of the Puff Adder is rats and mice. He 
will, when his choice food is scarce, eat toads, lizards, and other 
creatures. When making a meal of a toad, the Puff Adder 
simply seizes it by the head, without bothering to strike it first, 
and proceeds to swallow it alive. 
A MODERN JONAH. 
One day, away in the wilds of Zululand, I was sitting in a 
dreamy mood on an ant heap, when out of a shrub hopped a 
toad followed by a Puff Adder, which seized it. My natural 
prompting was to rescue the toad, but my investigating instinct 
got the better of me, so I just sat still and watched the snake 
swallow the toad. It took about half an hour, because the latter 
was a big one. At last it finished, and yawned several times, 
like the man who dines not wisely, but too well. Then my turn 
came, and I shot him. With my hunting knife I carefully dis- 
embowelled him, disinterred the toad, and laid it on the ground. 
It was an elongated thing of the nature of a sausage, covered all 
over with slime. 
Presently the slimy object moved. It inhaled a breath of 
air. It got broader. Its limbs began to come back into their 
natural positions, and it sat up, opened its eyes and looked 
around in a dazed sort of way. Then it gave a few preliminary 
jumps, and finding its limbs to be serviceable, hopped off into 
the bush, apparently not a bit the worse for its Jonah-like 
adventure. This incident happened many years ago, and since 
then I have had similar experiences on several occasions. A 
toad is a reptile, and very tenacious of life, and can exist for a 
considerable time without breathing. It is not possible for any 
warm-blooded creature, such as a mammal or bird, to exist alive 
after being swallowed by a snake, because immediately the breath- 
ing is arrested the creature dies. 
A GRUESOME SIGHT. 
Once I observed an enormous swarm of those dreaded pests, 
the Red Ants. They seemed to be actively employed, so I went 
closer, and discovered they were swarming over a Puff Adder. 
The snake was wriggling and struggling furiously. I retired out 
of the way of the ants, of which I had already very painful 
