60O HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



very sll)^ Joseph Grinnell relates that once when he shot a dehcate Httle 

 cactus wren it fell down under the cactus bush and disappeared ; and after 

 searching some time for his prize he discovered a snake-lizard crawling away 

 with the bird in its mouth. Then he captured the lizard also, which was 

 eight inches long, and he has it in his collection. Our Pasadena lizards are 

 all harmless, though the long-tailed, snaky fellow seems to have teeth for 

 eating tougher meat than the flies and tiny worms on which the others feed. 



In the pools that occur so often in the mountain canyons there will gen- 

 erally be found a pair or more of salamanders; called also "water puppies," 

 "water lizards," etc. They are of a reddish-brown color, perfectly harm- 

 less, and live in or out of the water, being amphibian batrachians, ambly- 

 stoma rubruni by name. 



In Wilson lake is found a small species of mud turtle ; also found in 

 the tule pond or lagoon in upper part of San Marino canyon [see page 377], 

 and in pools in the Arroyo Seco. 



Rattlesnakes were formerly common in all parts of Pasadenaland,* 

 but they are now rarely found on the mesa, the advance of cultivation hav- 

 ing nearly exterminated them ; in the mountains, however, they still occur. 

 There seems to be two varieties — a smaller one of dark slate color ; and a 

 larger, thicker-bodied, more sluggish one, of a reddish -brown color. 



The Red Racer is a snake peculiar to the country, and in some 

 respects is similar to the black racer of the east — in fact, some observers 

 say it is identical except in color. Mr. A. P. Janney, on East Union street, 

 informs me that he kept a red racer snake two years at his place, in a box 

 cage, and never knew it to eat or drink, although it shed its skin regularly ; 

 and once he chanced to see it in the very act of shuffling off" its last year's 

 overcoat. He finally sold it to a menagerie at lyos Angeles. It is probably 

 the swiftest-running snake of its size that we have any account of. In 

 May, 1888, I saw one that measured five feet four and one-half inches : very 

 slender ; pinky on belly, dappled pinky on back, and a splotch of black on 

 the neck. It was killed in a back door yard, where it was trying to catch 

 some little chicks. In July the same year I saw another one, three feet 

 eleven inches long, and with reddish, whitish and bluish colors. We called 

 him the " 4th-of-July snake." 



The Gopher Snake is a large, long fellow that ought never to be 

 killed, for it feeds almost entirely on young gophers, ground squirrels, etc., 

 which it catches by crawling into their holes and nesting places, and is thus 

 a true friend of the farmer. 



In 1884 I saw a long, lithe specimen of water snake in the Arroyo 

 Seco stream nearly where the Scoville dam now stands, but have not seen 

 any other of this kind except a small one in a pool in Rubio canyon. 



* See Judge Eaton's statement, on page 123; and I. B. Clappson page 119. It stands of record that 

 Mrs. Dr. Reid killed a rattlesnake with a stick, in Castle canyon, in August, 1S93 ; and in August, 1894, 

 Mrs. Dr. Grinnell shot one in the Arroyo above Devil's Gate, which her son Joseph skinned and pre- 

 served. 



