The Black Snake 



Harvey C. Went. 

 Camp Director's Association of America 



The article in the December issue entitled "Common Snakes" 

 interested me very much. I have never seen a black snake en- 

 circle a tree in the way E. B. Whiting mentions. I felt moved to 

 write this through the remark that the black snake was * ' said not to be 

 poisonous". There are but two poisonous snakes in the northern 

 states, except in the far west, and these are the rattler and the 

 copperhead. Fanners will generally assure you that the flat- 

 headed adder is poisonous, but this is not so 



I made the acquaintance of the black snake in 1912, while run- 

 ning the boy scout camp on the Housatonic River. We always 

 had a number of these creatures in captivity. In the fall I secured 

 a 39 inch black water snake, and he became a member of my 

 household. For a while I kept him in a box, but soon gave him 

 his liberty to roam about the house as he wished. I must confess 

 that many of my wife's friends stopped calling. As time passed, 

 he felt the desire to enter upon his winter's sleep ,and would 

 disappear into all Forts of strange places. Once he was found 

 coiled around the springs of an old upholstered chair, and it was 

 certainly some tindertaking to get him to let go and allow me to 

 draw him out. Another time he was discovered in the back of 

 the piano, coiled around the wires. 



I was worried because he would not eat, and once a week I fed 

 him strips of beef, by forcible means. I split a led pencil, rounded 

 the end so as not to injure Pete's throat, and poked the meat into 

 his mouth and down his throat, while my left hand held his jaws 

 open. Sometimes the meat was returned. He almost always 

 fought against the process, though once in five or six times he 

 would eat a piece with apparent relish. In the spring of 1913, 

 while visiting the Bronx Zoo, I inquired what to feed the snake. I 

 was advised to try fish. I had never thought of that. From then 

 on, there was no more forcible feeding. I would put Pete in the 

 bath tub in about three inches of water, and throw in some smelt 

 or a small eel. He would regard the offering for a moment, and 

 then seize it. When a snake eats, he holds his food with the jaws 

 of one side of his mouth, while he advances the opposite jaws and 



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