180 
CREATURES OF MYSTERY 
While the rattler cannot endure extreme heat, he will emerge 
from his gopher hole or den in the rocks around Easter and 
delights in exposing himself to the gentle spring sunshine. Such 
gentle heat provides not merely a bodily comfort but seems to 
ripen his old skin and prepare the same to be sloughed. Even 
his eyes turn white in the process, and he is temporarily 
blinded, but such condition does not continue for long. When 
he realizes that the time is right for sloughing, he crawls 
among the palmettoes with their saw-edge stems, or among 
cactus—perhaps hanging it upon a spur of some kind amidst 
the shrub oaks. He manages to hang his coat at the lip, gently 
crawling out of it, turning the old garment inside out in the 
process. And there you are! All dressed up in a new garment, 
so dazzlingly beautiful as would enable him to visit with and 
pay obeisance to kings, and it cost him not a farthing. 
The worship of Aesculapius was introduced into Rome in a 
time of great sickness, and an embassy was sent to Epidarus to 
invoke the aid of the god. He was propitious, and on the 
return of the ship, he accompanied it in the form of a ser¬ 
pent. 
The serpent, therefore, was a fit emblem of Rudra, “the 
healer,” and the Caduceus } the gift which Apollo presented to 
Mercury, the swift-footed messenger of the gods, could be en¬ 
twined with no more appropriate object than the serpent, which 
was supposed to be able to give the health, without which even 
Mercury’s magic staff could not confer health and happiness. 
(These old ancients understood as well as we of today that if 
we are to enjoy happiness we must first have health; and if the 
serpent could bring health, then he was a personage of no 
small moment.) 
Mercury’s famous rod of office, the caduceus, forms one of 
the most striking emblems of the talismanic serpent. But it is 
an error to suppose that this rod belonged exclusively to Her¬ 
mes or Mercury, for it may be found in the hand of the Egyp¬ 
tian Anubis, the Assyrian Cybele, the Grecian Aphrodite, 
Demeter, Dionysus, Mars, Minerva, and the personified con¬ 
stellation Virgo. (So we see that many of the heathen gods 
used the serpent in decorating their staff of office or symbol of 
