Adventure with a Rattlesnake

Adventure with a Rattlesnake By Elmer A. Graff Rattlesnakes are not hard to cap- ture if a safe method coupled with common sense is used, so say the Cou- gar and Coyote patrol of Rockville, Utah, Zion National Park Council B. S. A. But wait a minute; let their scoutmaster tell how they came to capture the largest d i a m o n d-back which had ever been seen 'in that locality: "We were going on our weekly hike u p Shonesburg canyon, two or three miles south- east of Zion Na- tional Park, to ex- plore the cliff dwellings thought to belong to the ancient Moqui In- dians. As none of us had ever been there before, we decided to tie our horses at the foot of the mountain and search for the ancient stronghold. "The mountain side was very steep and it was often necessary to use our hands to assist in climbing over the rocks. Scout Jennings, of the Cougar patrol, was a few feet in front of me. when suddenly he gave a piercing shriek and stood there too frightened to move away. I rushed to his side, and to my surprise a huge rattlesnake lay coiled up about eighteen inches from the ashen white face of Jennings. Upon my approach the diamond-back emitted a short rattle, then drew back his flat beaded head to make his deadly _» j ' . « " ^* -.'" P"3^fe ;K»£-C>-/ y^^-^'' s?/.&|B ^•1* m^M "j>3fjgj§ fp^^-rM^ ■V ^h. . &-S'i. i^^fA >%£&&. Mr. Rattlesnake plunge. With a quick jerk I pulled Jennings out of the way, and none too soon, for the fatal fangs of the monster barely missed their mark. He wailed his disappointment by making his rat- tles fairly sing, while we moved to a large rock and listened to the tune of ten protesting rattles. 'Let's capture the old fellow and take him home alive,' I suggested. The scouts were all in favor of the idea but wondered who would 'put the bell on the cat.' I allayed their fears by telling all but Demille and An- gell to remain on the rock. ' 'Demille, bring me the top limb of that scrub cedar, and Jennings throw me your top string,' I commanded. "Mr. Rattlesnake in the meantime slowly uncoiled his four and a half feet of detestable anatomy and pro- ceeded to crawl under a small rock. Shortly after he had gained the entrance of a hole under the boulder, I had a noose made in one end of the string and arranged so that it could be loos- ened and tightened at will. With an old dry limb I pried the rock a few inches from its original position, and immediately the deadly warning was given. A moment later his head emerged from under the rock. The noose was quickly placed over his head, the string tightened, and amidst

ADVENTURE WITH A RATTLESNAKE 225 terrible lashing and rattling, Mr. Rat- tlesnake was carried down the moun- tain side. "The real problem which now con- fronted us was how to get him home, a distance of ten miles. One of the boys, however, had a six-quart pail which contained his lunch, so, after emptying it of its contents, we made the lid secure by wiring two sides of it down. On the third side the wire was threaded through the hole in the lid and rim of the bucket and left loose. The venomous monster was then pushed into the bucket, head foremost, while a forked stick was used to assist in placing the remainder of his body inside. The string was then cut and the lid forced down and wired. "The horses were frantic with fear when we approached them with the reptile, who continued to 'voice' his anger by vibrating his rattles against the sides of the tin bucket. "After reaching home, we turned the old fellow out from the bucket, caught him in the same manner as before, and extracted his poison fangs with a pair of wire pliers. "He was kept in captivity for more than a week, but refused to eat live mice, lizards and gophers supplied to him, so we finally took his life and thus ended his captivity." Enlisted Soldiers of Our Forests By Wreno Bowers In nature a constant battle goes on for existence, and nothing in her scheme of things has a harder struggle than the trees of our forests. Over 500 kinds of forest trees grow naturally within the United States. Some trees are provided with greater powers of resistance than others, but they all have their natural enemies. There are 200,000 known kinds of tree- attacking insects, and these pests destroy tens of thousands of trees every year. In this relentless warfare, nature enlists birds to save her trees. More than sixty bird families have their part to play in the great army of forest protection. There- fore, properly to guard our birds is a phase of forest protection. To observers of birds and forests most of these facts are well known: but so ignorant are many people that these feathered friends are often shot or driven away while shade and forest trees may be perishing through lack of their skilled services. It is a dangerous experiment, indeed, to upset nature's bal- ance. To the larger tree savers, the wood- peckers, nature has committed the duty of specializing on those insects that injure the tree internally, and hence special in- struments are required for their removal. The woodpecker's bill is a hammer, pick- axe, and auger combined, and his tongue a long, flexible, extensible spear. With the impressive "tap, tap, tap," he lo- cates a decayed spot inhabited by boring larva or a colony of ants. Promptly he breaks open the infected part and devours the insect pests. So helpful are his serv- ices in the great economy of the earth that out of the nearly 800 birds of America the woodpecker is considered our most useful bird citizen. Woodpeckers have the actual supervi- sion of our forest trees. Human senses cannot locate the tree borers; only the long, pick-axe bill of the woodpecker can locate the vile grub and remove it from its hiding place. Alighting against the trunk of a tree, the little soldier edges about, giving the tree a rattling patter of taps with his bill. Presently a sound in- dicates to his acute sense that he has found the spot, and with rained blows he lays open the right place. Then with his long, extensible, and barbed tongue, coiled up on the hyoid bone, he reaches the burrow and drags forth the beetle larva from the bottom of its crooked gallery, sometimes

226 IMPROVEMENT ERA three inches from the bottom of the picked hole. A useful tool, this tongue of his — the only instrument that can reach and destroy the larva of long-horned borer beetles. Nearly every locality has one or more representatives from the twenty-four woodpecker families. They are as widely distributed as forests and everywhere they give their impartial attention to trees. Their food consists of ants, beetles, borers, grasshoppers, bugs, timber worm9, and various kinds of moths and flies, which infest forests and vegetation in all parts of the country to our very serious loss. Surely they deserve the gratitude of all American citizens. One of the best-known, among wood- peckers, is the flicker. It is popular in every locality where it is found and is known by a wide variety of local names. Golden-winged woodpecker, wake-up, yellowhammier, and many other names have been recorded. The red-shafted flicker, the largest of the woodpeckers, is the Western representative of the Eastern flicker. Whether in field or forest these birds are found engaged in the occupa- tion of destroying insect life. More than fifty per cent of the flicker's yearly diet is made up of ants. A single bird will eat thousands of these insects in a day and any creature which destroys ants is a de- cided boon to agriculture. Ants are small, but their destructive power is enormous. The tremite, or white ant, takes heavy annual toll in lum- ber. They eat into the wood of floor- ings, walls and foundations; honeycomb- ing the wood and weakening it. Not only are ants wood borers, but they care for and perpetuate plant lice or aphids, which infest vegetation in all parts of the country to a loss of millions of dollars each year! The downy and hairy woodpeckers are other quiet little soldiers. These birds range over the greater part of the United States. In cultivated districts they are of great service and value to the fruit grower, cleaning the trees of boring larva and the unmanageable scale insects. Some people are of the impression that woodpeckers injure trees by digging deep holes for nesting purposes, but it is only in dead or decaying trunks that they ex- cavate for the nest. After the nesting season the holes are pecked out and used for winter shelter. Each year the wood- pecker constructs a new home and the abandoned hole is left to the chickadee, bluebird and other birds which prefer wood- en-walled homes but cannot construct them. In North America, taken as a whole, woodpeckers are very numerous, and the millions of individual birds which have yet escaped the guns of ignorant hunters constitute a mighty army of protection to our forests. Some of the smaller tree savers include the chickadees, bushtits, nuthatches, and creepers. These species are small in size but they render a great service to our forests. We find them busily engaged among the trees and shrubs, searching every branch and twig for insect eggs and larva. Specimens of the chickadee were found to have eaten as many as 900 eggs each of the cankerworm. That many eggs, if allowed to hatch, would produce enough cankerworms to destroy a tree in a single season; so the good which the chickadee does by the destruction of cankerworms alone is beyond estimation. All of these active little soldiers deserve full credit for the good they do in saving forest trees. If thou takest vritue for the rule of life, and valuest thyself upon aeting in all things conformably thereto, thou wilt have no cause to envy lords and princes; for blood is inherited, but virtue is common property, and may be acquired by all; it has, moreover, an intrinsic worth, which blood has not. — Cervantes: Don Quixote.