[Concord, Massachusetts]
1912
May 10
(No 2)
[May 10, 1912]

then darted out his forked tongue. When I moved he
resumed his tail motion & "rattling". A [At] my second step
forward he raised his head a foot or more above the 
ground and began gliding swiftly straight towards me.
When I stepped back he stopped and with head still
elevated fixed me with his glittering, basilisk eyes. Altogether
his behavior was so impressively threatening that I
was rather glad to leave him as I did not care
to kill him and felt reasonably sure that I should 
have had to do so in self defence had I provoked
him further. I wonder how he caught the mouse.
He could not have had it long when I first saw him.
He then had only its head in his mouth and was
holding it "bottom side" up with its white under parts
showing & its pinkish feet moving convulsively & pathetically.
My first impulse was, of course, to kill him & rescue the mouse.