CREATURES OF MYSTERY 
87 
of his little sister, and was admonished to be in haste. Arriving 
at the house he observed that the child was looking at some¬ 
thing upon the brick walk as she drew back against the closed 
front door, shrinking from something he had not yet observed. 
Focusing his eyes upon the same spot which seemed to be en¬ 
gaging the attention of his sister he observed a six-foot dia¬ 
mond-back with head reared six inches off the ground, looking 
intently upon the little girl. Gaining admission to the house 
by way of the back door, he seized his father’s shotgun off the 
gun rack. On his return to the scene the rattler was making 
his getaway through the open front gate, having already 
sensed the fact that the situation was growing rather menacing 
to his well-being. A well-placed load of bird shot rolled him 
up into a writhing heap. 
Where no attempt is made to keep the diamond-back menace 
under control, they eventually become highly expensive maraud¬ 
ers—not alone by reason of the number of cows, hogs, dogs, 
etc., attacked, but because of the amount of food consumed as 
well. By way of parentheses, mention will be made of the fact 
that one farmer known to the writer, and a small operator, 
too, suffered the loss of five head of cattle during a single sum¬ 
mer, one of the five a fine milch cow worth fifty or sixty dollars. 
By reason of his great losses he imagined that the corner in 
which the attacks were always staged was infested with a reg¬ 
ular colony of the dread reptiles, but when finally hunted out 
and exterminated, it proved that a single pair of them had 
been doing all the damage. 
This cotton farmer was having the fight of his life against 
crab-grass which threatened to completely possess his field of 
cotton. Labor being short, and being pressed for time, he en¬ 
listed the aid of his flock of geese. Every cotton grower knows 
how they welcome the sight of tender, juicy, crab-grass, at the 
same time spurning a diet of cotton. Furthermore, they seem 
to poison the grass with their saw teeth, thus giving the farmer 
an added advantage over the grass in time of emergency. 
Geese gather grass diligently from early dawn until the sun 
gets too warm for them, then they gather into a cool place and 
gossip until the shadows creep over the field in the cool of the 
