"Let us get him stuffed," said Fritz, "and set him up in the museum among our shells and corals."
"Did anybody ever think of eating serpents?" inquired Franz.
"Of course not!" said his mother. "Why, child, serpents are poisonous—it would be very dangerous."
"Excuse me, my dear wife," said I. "First of all, the boa is not poisonous; and then, besides that, the flesh of even poisonous snakes can be eaten without danger; as, for instance, the rattlesnake, from which can be made a strong and nourishing soup, tasting very like good chicken broth—of course, the cook must be told to throw away the head, containing the deadly fangs.
"It is remarkable that pigs do not fear poisonous snakes, but can kill and eat them without injury. An instance of this occurs to my memory. A vessel on Lake Superior, in North America, was wrecked on a small island, abounding in rattlesnakes, and for that reason uninhabited.
"The vessel had a cargo of live pigs. The crew escaped to the mainland in a boat, but the pigs had to be left for some time, till the owner could return to fetch them, but with the small hope of finding many left alive.
"To his surprise, the animals were not only alive, but remarkably fat and flourishing, while not a single rattlesnake remained on the island. The pigs had clearly eaten the serpents."
"But might not some other cause have been assigned for their disappearance?" asked Ernest. "Suppose, for example, that a great flight of secretary birds had arrived; they might have cleared the island of rattlesnakes."
"Oh, what is a secretary bird?" interrupted Franz. "I thought a secretary meant a man who wrote letters?"
"So it does, Franz, and the bird Ernest spoke of has curious long feathers projecting from either side of its head, something like pens stuck behind a man's ear; hence its name.