THE STRANGEST FREAK.
“SNAKES in a den, like bees in a hive, and she eats ’em alive. That’s what she does, ladies and gentlemen. She bites the head off, eats the body, and throws the tail away. And it costs you but ten cents, one dime, the tenth part of a dollar, to see Bosko.”
It was just outside the main side-show connected with Poole Brothers’ Royal Roman Hippodrome and Three Ring Circus, and the big tent had not yet opened for the afternoon’s performance.
Stetson, manager of the freaks and chief announcer for all the special shows, had just succeeded, by beating on a large iron triangle, in attracting a majority of the people standing about the grounds. Behind him on a raised platform was a huge box-like pen which rose to about the height of a man’s shoulder.
Gaudy placards and pictures adorning the upper part of this platform stated that within could be seen Bosko—the Strangest Freak Ever Born to Live—a human snake-eater. One of the pictures represented a creature clothed principally in long black hair and a ferocious expression squatting at the entrance of a large cave. In one hand, or paw, was a decapitated giant rattlesnake which she was in the act of devouring.
“Esau, that’s her first name; Bosko, that’s her last name; and she eats live snakes,—rattlesnakes, copperheads, yellow backs, and Gila monsters. That’s what she eats, that’s what she lives on,” shouted the manager.
The country people, anxious as ever to throw away the money so hardly wrung from their stubborn hill farms, crowded each other in their eagerness to be first on the platform. The box-like pen was about ten feet long by four feet wide, and soon between thirty and forty people had crowded about the rail, and were peering open-mouthed over the edge.
On the bottom of the pen was crouched a dark-skinned Something lazily rolling its head from side to side. This Something wore a brown canvas skirt which came to the knees, and a sort of loose coat or jacket over the shoulder. On her head, and hanging down over her eyes, was a long, black mane of hair, which but few of the yokels about recognized as a wig.
But crawling over this swarthy, thick-lipped creature were the things which caused the exclamations on the part of the bystanders. Over the body of Bosko, under, beside and behind her, twined and wriggled dozen upon dozen of twisting, writhing snakes. They coiled and uncoiled over her black legs, running out their little forked tongues spitefully. The sun beat down fiercely overhead, and swarms of flies settled down on every part of the evil smelling pen.