Tommy Smith didn’t quite like the idea of kneeling down and putting his face close to the mouth of the adder. He had heard of men who put their heads inside a lion’s mouth, and he thought that this would be almost as dangerous. However, the adder promised not to bite him, and as he said he never had bitten a little boy in the whole of his life, and should not think of doing so without a proper reason, he thought he might trust him. So he knelt down and looked. Then the adder opened his mouth, and, as he did so, two little white things like fish-bones seemed to shoot forward into the front part of it. “Those are my two poison-fangs,” he said. “When my mouth is shut, they lie back against my upper jaw, but as soon as I open it to bite anyone, they shoot forward so as to be in the right place.” Tommy Smith looked at the teeth. They were as sharp as needles and almost as thin, but they were not straight like common needles, but curved backwards like crochet-needles. “What curious teeth!” he said.
“Perhaps they are more curious than you think,” said the adder; “just look at the tips of them, and see if you notice anything.”
Tommy Smith looked as the adder told him, and he was surprised to see a tiny little hole at the tip of each tooth. “Why, Mr. Adder,” he said, “it seems to me as if your teeth were hollow and wanted stopping.”
“They are hollow,” said the adder, “and I will tell you why. At the root of each of them I have a little bag which is full of poison. You cannot see it, of course, because it is hidden under the flesh of my upper jaw. But things which cannot be seen are very often felt. Now, when I bite an animal, these little bags open, and a drop or two of poison runs down each tooth where it is hollow, so that it goes into the flesh of that animal and mixes with its blood.”
“And does that kill it?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Oh yes!” answered the adder; “because I only bite small animals. It would not kill a horse, or a cow, or even a pig, unless it was very young. But it kills field-mice, and shrew-mice, and things of that sort.”
“But there is one thing, Mr. Adder, which I don’t understand,” said Tommy Smith. “I thought that one had to swallow poison for it to kill one. But you say that this poison of yours goes into the blood.”
“I don’t know anything about poisons that have to be swallowed,” said the adder; “I only know about my poison, and I use that in the way I have told you. My poison must go into the blood. If you were only to swallow it, I daresay it would not hurt you at all.”
“I should not like to try,” Tommy Smith said. “But are you going?” for the adder had begun to crawl away.
“Yes,” said the adder; “I am going now, for I have plenty to do. I should not have wasted my time like this, only I heard that poor creature, the grass-snake, talking about himself, so I thought I would just show you what a much more important animal I am than he.”