A startling and almost horrifying demonstration of what physiologists would perhaps attribute to nervous or to muscular irritability is described by Dr. Mitchel, namely, an action that had been begun in life, carried out in a headless snake. On p. 281 was described the astonishment of Colonel Beverley, who observed the severed head of a rattlesnake attempting to bite. ‘Then the head gave a sudden champ.’ Long after a snake is dead the tongue will be exserted as in life; and in other actions they, as it were, carry out their intentions though deprived of vitality. ‘The headless trunk will strike,’ says Dr. Mitchel, and continue to do this when touched or irritated as if it still had its head and its fangs to strike with!
Mr. George Catlin in his Life among the Indians relates a circumstance of this kind which may well be introduced here, as illustrative of this amazing fact—a rattlesnake coiling and springing after it is decapitated. His party were going down a river, and had just landed to explore a little, when he saw a large Crotalus, and seizing his gun fired at its head. At the same moment it leaped and sprang towards him, apparently striking him on the breast, Mr. Catlin being on the point of leaping back into the boat. He thought he had fired and missed his aim, and was a dead man, nevertheless much wondering at having missed his mark. Meantime, an Indian, seeing a spot of blood on the front of Mr. Catlin’s linen smock, exclaimed, ‘You are bitten!’ and without ceremony the smock and flannel shirt were torn open, and a spot of blood on his breast was exposed to view. Promptly the blood was washed off, and the Indian on his knees had his mouth at the wound preparing to suck out the poison. Quickly looking up, however, he rose to his feet, and with a smile of exultation said, ‘There’s no harm! You’ll find the snake without its head.’
Stepping ashore again, and pushing aside the long grass, there, sure enough, was the headless rattlesnake, coiled up where it had fallen, and with its headless trunk erect, ready for another spring. Mr. Catlin had not missed fire, but the creature so near the spring, was so ready at the instant with its aim made, that it leapt and struck Mr. Catlin probably on the very spot where it would have bitten him had the sportsman missed his mark. The bleeding trunk had printed its stroke with blood, driving the stain through the dress to the skin. ‘How curious it is,’ Mr. Catlin remarks at the conclusion of his narrative, ‘that if you cut off the head of a rattlesnake, its body will live for hours, and jump at you if you touch it with a stick, when if you break his spine near the tail, with even a feeble blow, it is dead in a minute. This we proved on several occasions.’
Mr. Catlin also helps to confirm what has been already stated in these pages, viz. the certainty of the mate being within hearing of the rattle, and responding when one of them sounds an alarm; also that ‘they can track each other and never lose company, though when met are not always seen together, so that if we kill one over-night and leave its dead body, the other will be found by its side in the morning.’
A near relative of the rattlesnake is the ‘copper-head,’ Trigonocephalus contortrix of the United States, known also as the ‘Red adder,’ and the ‘Dumb rattlesnake.’ It is the Boa contortrix of Linnæus, who, as we explained above, and also in chap. ii., divided the Ophidia into only three or four families, calling an immense number, both venomous and harmless, ‘boas.’
This member of the Crotalidæ is said to be as venomous as the rattlesnake, and is much more dreaded, because it has no rattle to give warning of its proximity. When a bitten person survives, the effects of its bite are said to be felt annually, as in the case of the rattlesnake, and the injured limb ‘turns the colour of the snake.’ In regard to this latter symptom, said to show itself in the case of so many snakes, the bitten limb assumes all manner of horrible tints in most cases, and it does not require a great stretch of imagination to detect colours resembling the also many-tinted aggressors. Still there may be more in this than we at present know of.
In the cranberry swamps and tamarack marshes in the northern districts of Ohio formerly were found immense numbers of a small and very dark brown rattlesnake known as the Massasauga. It is seen lying in clusters like small twigs on dry leaves, and still is found in considerable numbers in some remote districts. The illustration of the small rattle (p. 302) was sent me from that neighbourhood, and is, I believe, from a true ‘Massasauga.’ This is the one (as I think I am safe in stating) that was first (1810) described by Dr. Kirtland, a distinguished naturalist of Ohio, and after him named Crotalophorus Kirtlandi. Its range is confined to the swampy districts of Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan. Its rattle being scarcely audible, this little snake gets frequently trodden upon, and persons are as frequently bitten; but Dr. Kirtland stated that he had never known any one to die of its bite, which is scarcely worse than the sting of a hornet. It is a link between the last-named snake, the ‘copper-head,’ and the rattlesnake, having head-shields like the former, and tail of the latter. These small species no doubt help to add to the confusion of evidence regarding the virulence of rattlesnake bites, one person affirming that they are deadly, and another, that recovery is common. The degree of venom between the smallest and the largest of the Crotalidæ can no more be compared than can the constriction of the little slow-worm round your fingers with the constriction of the anaconda.
A word in conclusion about the rattlesnake’s enemies; and of these hogs come first, next to man. Wild hogs, peccaries, and deer in their native haunts, and doubtless an immense number of snake-eating birds, devour young rattlesnakes. Deer strike them with their hoofs, jumping on them with wonderful adroitness, so as to pin them down with all four feet. Pigs in the west derive no small part of their subsistence from snakes; and, as is now a well-known fact, the introduction of hogs has done more than anything else—not even excepting the annual battue—to diminish the number of rattlesnakes. The venom being ‘innocuous to hogs,’ is a fact only partially stated. A thin hog, bitten on a vein, might die as speedily as any other victim. It is because the venom fails to penetrate the fat, or, as Dr. Coues more ably expresses it, ‘the fluid fails to enter the circulation through the layer of adipose tissue.’ Pigs are not invariably exempt, any more than is the mongoose, from the cobra’s bite. In both cases adroitness assists the animals to evade the strike, and in the latter case the thick fur of the mongoose is as great a protection to it as the fat is to the hog.
Dr. Coues mentions a danger not often anticipated in dealing with rattlesnakes when you wish to examine them. This is their habit of twining themselves around the arm, or wherever they can get hold. ‘Grasp it fearlessly at the back of the neck,’ he says; ‘but even then a large one can constrict enough to paralyze both arms.’ A man who was thus trammelled had to be relieved by a bystander. We are not always prepared for constricting rattlesnakes!