g2 THE ODYSSEY OF AN ANIMAL COLLECTOR 
nothing they liked better than to watch me fish a large snake out 
of a tree, and often they would heave stones to get it to change 
position, so that I could more favorably operate my snake-stick. 
This was a contraption consisting of sections of bamboo fitting 
into one another like a fishing-rod, but much stouter. A thin strip 
of leather was fastened to the end of the rod, and then passed 
through a small hole a little over an inch from the end. To the 
loose end of this leather thong, a piece of cord as long as the pole 
was fixed. A loop of any desired length could be made by adjust- 
ing the leather thong between its fixed end and where it passed 
through the hole, and a tug on the cord immediately tightened 
the noose. All one had to do, thorns, leaves, and branches permit- 
ting, was to slip the noose over the snake’s head, not bothering 
whether it was round his neck or body, and pull the string, keep- 
ing it taut. The snake was then pinned against the stick by the 
pressure of the thong, and could be hauled down. If he were 
caught near the neck, the operation of slipping him into a large 
sack was simple, as it was only necessary to close the sack tightly 
round the snake-stick, relax the tension on the cord, and so let 
the snake wriggle free. However, if caught in the middle, he was 
free to strike in all directions, thus making it too dangerous to get 
him into the sack; in such cases I used to walk home carrying the 
imprisoned snake on the pole, and then drop him straight into a 
traveling box specially provided with a lid on the upper side. 
The fast-moving snakes are much more easily caught in trees 
than when on the ground. In the latter case, they travel at great 
speed through the grass and are difficult to follow, but in the trees 
they rely upon their protective coloration and remain fairly sta- 
tionary. As their attention is glued on the person holding the 
snake-stick and not on the stick itself, there is little difficulty in 
slipping the noose over the snakes’ heads. 
Once I caught a snake in a most unusual manner. I had set a 
cage-trap, a home-made box-shaped affair made of wire netting 
with a drop-front, at the base of a wild fig-tree, hoping to catch 
an unusual squirrel I had seen there, but on visiting the trap found 
a rat had been caught. Being in a hurry to visit other traps and 
nets, I left him there and came back some hours later to reset the 
trap, but to my astonishment the rat had disappeared, and a snake 
