CREATURES OF MYSTERY 
253 
necessary to dear photography are good, and then await your 
opportunity. 
The third is the power of the rattler to kill, or to reduce to 
unconsciousness little victims on which they level their deadly 
concentration. I, for one, do not believe that their victims are 
dead, but, like the spider, are lulled into hypnotic slumber. 
The black wasp certainly has that power, as the writer can 
personally testify. Only one person in a million among those 
living in infested territory would ever come upon a rattler and 
his victim at just the opportune time. The opportunity will 
sooner or later come to some reader, and when it does they 
could lay the rabbit or squirrel away and keep such victim of 
the rattler’s deadly charm under observation until the full 
truth is definitely established. These three secrets pertaining 
to natural life remain to be solved. Insofar as the writer 
knows, no person, either scientist or layman, has ever at¬ 
tempted to wrest these secrets from the reptile. 
This old battler of rattlers once came upon one that had 
just finished dining. When he had slain the brute he was prone 
to satisfy his curiosity to know just what he had caught. It 
proved to be a cat-squirrel. Being satisfied, he laid the squirrel 
in the fork of a great oak tree and continued chipping his 
boxes. A week later he passed the spot again, giving his tur¬ 
pentine faces their usual weekly streaking, and was amazed as 
he took note of the fact that there was no evidence whatever 
of decomposition. The squirrel remained there for weeks, 
never being attacked by anything, slowly perishing away, but 
never did exude that objectionable odor of decaying flesh. This 
incident provided occasion for more pondering for many weeks 
and years to come. 
Now that state of suspended animation among animals is so 
closely related to a trance known to members of the human 
family that the old gentleman has since wondered if the squir¬ 
rel’s major organs ceased functioning entirely during that very 
brief interim of time he was in the belly of the reptile—he has 
since wondered if he was actually dead, or if he was living on, 
in the same state the spider experiences when the black wasp 
