A momentary lull followed this challenge, but the bet was promptly taken by several of the company, the "dead-horse" story-teller being the first to rise to the bait.
In a moment Amos had left the store, and within a half-hour (barely long enough for him to have reached his home and returned) he reappeared with a box containing the "proofs" of his remarkable statement.
He won his bet, having introduced his sceptical hearers to the two prime authorities that knew more about hair snakes than all the rustic wiseacres or scientific professors put together, for his box was filled with grasshoppers and black crickets, including one or two specimens specially preserved in a small vial of alcohol, to show the parasitic snake coiled in its close spiral.
It is reported that Amos never got his scythe, however, the "dead-horse" story-teller having backed out on a technicality, claiming that Amos could not have seen the snakes, he said, and that the snakes had no wings, and consequently could not have been seen "flying" over the meadow; but the cobbler was at least the means of wiping out the hair-snake superstition in the village, and even to this day he is heard to sing out to the chaffing group at the village store, on occasions when he is crowded a little too far, "Who sed hoss-har snake?" He laughs best who laughs last.
There was nothing in the outward appearance of Amos to indicate an intelligence superior to that of his fellows, the secret of his present victorious position being found in the fact that he had been in the habit of making the most of his "summer boarders." One of these, during the present season, had been a college professor of biology, who had enlightened him on many puzzling matters of natural history, including the mystery of the hair snake, whose horse-hair origin he would once have maintained as stoutly as did his opponents at the village store.
My own early belief was influenced by the prevailing country opinion, and more than one is the horse hair which I have put to soak with interesting anticipation. By a mere accident the true source of the snake was discovered. I had procured a box of grasshoppers and crickets for bait, numbering some hundreds, and once, upon opening it, observed two of the thread-like creatures entangled like a snell among the insects. Further experience while baiting the hooks with the grasshoppers revealed others in the bodies of both crickets and grasshoppers, which seemed in no way disturbed by their presence.
So the "horse-hair snake" may be written down a myth. Its existence prior to the time we discover it in the brook or puddle has been spent under the hospitable roof of the insects mentioned, upon escaping from which it seeks the water to lay its eggs. The young in turn seek the grasshoppers and crickets which frequent their haunt, and thus the routine is continued, to the possible annoyance of the grasshopper and the complete mystification of the rural scientist.
