OF WILD ANIMALS i 97 



somewhat in that school I have emerged with a fixed belief that 

 of all vertebrate creatures, snakes are the least understood, 

 and also the most thoroughly misunderstood. 



The world at large debits serpents with being far more 

 quarrelsome and aggressive than they really are, and it credits 

 them with knowing far less than they do know. 



Attitude of Snakes Toward Each Other. Toward each 

 other, the members of the various serpent species are tolerant, 

 patient and peaceful to the last degree. You may place to- 

 gether in one cage twenty big Texas rattlers, or twenty ugly 

 cottonmouth moccasins from the Carolinas, a hundred garter 

 snakes, twenty boa constrictors, or six big pythons, and if the 

 various species are kept separate there will be no fighting. 

 You may stir them up to any reasonable extent, and make 

 them keen to strike you, but they do not attack each other. 



There are, however, many species that will not mix together 

 in peace. For example, the king snake of New Jersey hates 

 the rattlesnake, no matter what his address may be. Being 

 by habit a constrictor, the king snake at once winds himself 

 tightly around the neck of the rattler, — and proceeds to choke 

 him to death. 



The king cobra devours other snakes, as food, and wishes 

 nothing else. 



The Gopher Snake. Some snakes that feel sure you will 

 not harm them will permit you to handle them without a 

 protest or a fight. The most spectacular example is the 

 gopher snake of the southeastern United States. This hand- 

 some, lustrous, blue-black species is six feet long, shiny, and as 

 clean and smooth as ivory. Its members are famous rat- 

 killers. You can pick up a wild one wherever you find it, and 

 it will not bite you. They do not at all object to being handled, 

 even by timorous lady visitors who never before have touched 

 a live snake; and in the South they are tolerated by farmers 

 for the good they do as rat catchers. 



The Wisdom of a Big Python. Once I witnessed an 



