FORES TUAND “STREAM; 





NATURAL EISTORY | 


Something About Florida?Snakes. 
THERE is a lot of snake-talk in Florida, with 
some snakes. Around the cheerful pitch-pine 
fire many an evening was passed discussing this, 
to me, most attractive subject. From a boy I 
have been a friend and student of this almost 
universally despised reptile, and yet I am 
normal. Only some people say I have no 
“nerves,” for which Dieu merci. 
This little sketch does not pretend to be 
scientifically accurate or complete, but may give 
the readers of ForREST AND STREAM a few prac- 
tical points, which, I hope, will prove of value 
to visiting sportsmen. 
The list of snakes to be found in Florida would 
doubtless be a long one. I couldn’t give it to 
you. Most of them are perfectly harmless. 
Among the most common are the gopher snake, 
of a beautiful dark metallic blue, and which at- 
tains a length of seven feet sure, for I held one 
a few moments last winter which measured that. 
This snake lives in the holes made by the 
gopher, as the large land turtle is called, hence 
the. name given him by the natives, who at- 
tribute to him a wonderful capacity for ex- 
terminating rattlesnakes, which I doubt. 
The coachwhip is another variety, the flash 
of whose long, slender body will become a 
familiar sight to you. He reaches six feet, too, 
but is slender and a racer. _His head and neck 
are a beautiful shade of brown, and the rest of 
his body is covered with brown lines exactly 
as if it had been braided, and the leather color 
makes the name of coachwhip particularly ap- 
propriate. 
Still another harmless snake is the king snake, 
also called chicken snake and _ rattlesnake’s 
pilot. But with these innocents we are not 
concerned, although if one runs over your boot 
quick at the moment you are standing with 
nerves a trifle tense, waiting for the covey of 
quail to jump into the air, it is just possible 
you may be considerably concerned—just for an 
instant. 
There are three venomous snakes in Florida 
—the diamond-backed rattlesnake, the cotton- 
mouthed moccasin, the harlequin or coral snake. 
The last-named is really attractive with his 
bands of brilliant black, red and orange, a small 
fellow, two or three feet long and slender. It 
was in March that I saw the first ones. In 
plowing among the trees of an orange grove 
three had been turned up by the plowshare. 
They were then very slow and apparently just 
aroused from an all-winter sleep. The venom 
of these snakes is entirely different from that 
of the two first named, the same antidotes not 
seeming to produce at all the same results; 
but the little fellow is so peaceful that he has 
to be provoked into striking, and would always 
rather run than fight. 
A lad of eight years; son of the proprietor of 
the place where I wintered, was playing out 
doors early one bright morning before the 
household was afoot. He found one of these 
snakes, repaired to the kitchen, where he se- 
cured an old case knife, with which he removed 
the head of his victim and brought the body in 
triumph to his father. So much for their 
temper. They simply don’t count. 
The cotton-mouth or water moccasin is not 
so “easy,” and although not distinctly vicious, 
is still worthy of our respect. Like the coster- 
monger, “he loves to lie a basking in the sun,” 
and if you will go to the swamps in the warm 
months you will find him lying at length on the 
roots and low limbs of the cypress trees, from 
which he will slide quickly into the water on 
your approach. He is a dirty color, a brown 
with dull markings, his mouth a snowy white, 
whence his name. How long he can live under 
water I never could find out, but I know for 
a considerable time. I imagine he is much like 
a frog in this respect. Not many are bitten by 
him, for he is shy and would rather avoid trouble 
if possible. His bite is about on a par with the 
rattlesnake’s, and the same remedies are to be 
employed. 
I knew a man down there who was once 
standing on the shore of one of the many small 
lakes, in soft mud, when he felt something 
moving under his foot; he looked down and saw 
a good-sized moccasin struggling to escape; and 
he let him. The diamondback. Ah! here we have 
the villian. Treacherous, vicious, deadly, a 
blackguard. But he sounds his warning, you 
say. Yes, sometimes, not always. I have seen 
them when you couldn’t make them rattle. He 
may be anywhere, he may warn you, and he 
may not. Florida is just right for him, hot, dry 
and sunny, with thick palmettos and dense 
hammocks wherein he may hide. Fortunately, 
he is not in evidence during the winter, and no 
sportsman need hesitate to go afield up to 
March 1. If you feel nervous, carry a hypo- 
dermic. It will ease your mind; and while there 
is not one chance in a hundred that you will 
need it, yet it covers that one. After March 1, 
when you go in the hammocks, look where you 
are going to step. If you want skins as I did, 
get a native with a small pack of fox hounds. 
Most of these dogs have had more or less ex- 
perience with rattlers, and if they find one they 
will bark in a peculiar way and they will keep 
watch on that snake till you arrive, when you 
can shoot him in the head with a small rifle, 
or take him with a wire snare on the end of a 
pole. I got several good skins, the largest 
measuring 6 feet 6 inches long and nearly 12 
inches in circumference. Some of these I had 
tanned (in the natural color—not brown); the 
others I cured myself by stretching on a board, 
fleshing, drying and then applying vaseline for 
a week, the residue being finally removed with 
soft cotton. Skins preserved in this manner 
retain a very natural appearance, but are af- 
fected by the dryness or dampness of the atmos- 
phere and curl some. It is said that after a 
year or two the scales come off. This I can- 
not vouch for. Doubtless tanning is the most 
permanent method of preserving the beautiful 
ini Ah the skin of a diamondback is beau- 
titu 
There is probably no subject on which opinion 
varies to a greater extent than on the results 
of a rattlesnake bite. There is no question that 
it is serious—always. Results are in proportion 
to the amount of venom introduced into the 
circulation. Hence the bite of a large snake 
is more dangerous than that of a small one. 
Much depends on the location of the bite on 
the body of the victim. If the fang should in- 
ject the poison directly into a large vein, it is 
much more serious than if it is in some thick 
muscle or in fat. The depth of the incision 
made by the fang also plays an important part. 
The fangs of the rattlesnake, of which there 
are two in the front upper jaw, normally lie 
back against the roof of the mouth and are 
thrown forward when the snake strikes, which 
it does with a forward and downward blow. 
These two teeth, for they are of the same bony 
formation, contain a canal leading from the 
poison sac to just back of the point, and in a 
large snake would pierce a rubber and even 
leather boot. However, a good high leather 
boot is surely a protection and to be recom- 
mended to Florida shooters. 
To illustrate the rarity of snake bites there 
I might add that I only heard of two cases. One 
was told by a commercial traveler as happening 
to himself. Now those who know the propen- 
sities of members of the profession will take 
this one with a large saline chaser. He was 
quail shooting—jumped from the wagon on the 
snake, was bitten, rode ten miles for assistance, 
was very sick, but recovered fully. 
The other was a case which the fool-killer 
missed when he made his rounds. A man down 
there caught a large rattler alive and kept him 
as a pet in a box covered with fine wire screen- 
ing. He used to amuse hims-lf by scraping his 
finger tips across the screen to provoke the cap- 
tive into striking. One day the snake hit him 
fair on the end of a finger. He had no proper 
medical aid. His estate was divided among his 
relatives. Brown. 
The Snake Bird. 
THE snake bird is one of the great family of 
the totipalmate swimmers, to which’ belong also 
the gannets, cormorants and pelicans, and its sys- 
tematic place is between the gannets and the cor- 
morants. It is a bird of the warm country; in 
America not being found north of North Caro- 
lina, where however a few breed, but being most 
at home in the swamps and among the lakes of 
Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. It 
is one of the oddest of birds, with a very long 
neck, small head and sharp-pointed bill, and also 
with a long flat tail, the two middle feathers of 
which are curiously crimped or fluted, on their 
outer webs, at right angles to the shaft of the 
feather. The base of the upper mandible is bare 
of feathers, and the skin of the throat is bare 
and capable of much dilatation, like that of the 
cormorants. Species of Plotus are found in India, 
Africa and Australia. 
This is a bird of many names, of which the 
most common are, snake bird and water turkey; 
yet, the French creoles about New Orleans and 
on the Mississippi River call it bec a lancette, 
from its sharp pointed bill, while at the mouth 
of the Mississippi it is called water crow; in 
southern parts of Florida, Grecian lady; in Geor- 
cia and South Carolina, cormorant, and in the . 
hooks anhinga and_ black-bellied darter, the 
latter name applying strictly onlv to the male, for 
the under plumage of the female is light in color. 
The water turkey is a bird of the inland, and 
delights most in little lakes, pools and bayous sur- 
rounded by dense forests. Yet they are said very 
seldom to fly through the trees, but if startled, to 
pass along up or down the stream; and they 
rarely select for their homes ponds or lakes which 
are not large enough to enable them, if fright- 
ened, to rise above the trees before flying away. 
Although it sometimes breeds not far from the 
sea coast, the favorite nesting place of this spe- 
cies is in some tall cypress growing out of stag- 
nant water. Often a nest is built in a tall tree, 
but by no means always, for sometimes low 
bushes not more than eight or ten feet above 
the water may be chosen. Sometimes these nests 
are placed in the same tree with the nests of 
other birds, and formerly the snake bird used to 
rear its young in the midst of the rookeries of 
the larger herons. The nest is flattened and re- 
sembles that of the Florida cormorant. It is made 
of sticks of considerable size and is a solid and 
compact structure. Here the four eggs are laid 
and here the young are hatched and reared, not 
leaving the nest until they are fully fledged, when 
their parents drive them from the nest to the 
water below and proceed to rear a second brood. 
The snake bird is readily tamed. when taken 
young. Once when staying at Pointe Coupee, 
nearly opposite the mouth of Bayou Sara, in the 
State of Mississippi, Audubon saw some young 
which had been tamed. He says, “One day en- 
tering the house of an humble settler close to the 
western bank of the Mississippi, I observed two 
young anhingas that had been taken out of a nest 
containing four, that had been built ‘on a high 
