The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 25, 1900, Page 7

THE ves His Living by MRaising Rattlesnakes. prey by sinking their fangs in ft got to swallowing a big ground squirrel sald the rattlesnake king’s protege, sit- working dead against our interests? So AY CALL vs any liberties even there isn’t anything on the earth or in the . » A rat is always air that a rattlesnake won't kill and eat and crushing jt. Their teeth are too large for him. He would have died ting at his side. we used to let the sow go smell- — ’ ¥ person or anything else.” if it's hungry, and"— like long needles so turned in dlag- If Dan hadn't happened to see his distress _“Oh, ves, those hogs sald Abner re- Ing and grunting over that hill ™ “Tell me somethi. about what you “Except bats, Abner,” interrupted the onally t when they begin to and came and helped him get the animal flectively. “Lord! how hogs do go for yonder while I followed se b ; 8 2g ‘Doctor’ in adopted boy Dan. s ow u bird or an animal they have out. I've found over a dozen dead rat- rattlesnakes! Why, they don't seem to hind. Whenever the sow got scent o Al B him as all t reporter. “‘Oh, except bats, ented Dodge. to keep at it. They have a heap of saliva tlers with a quail or some other bird or pay no more attention to the fangs of a snake I could tell by her eagerness and S hority ge once and [ that flows over their prey He coiled himself into the snak it progresses animal in their jaws too large to go into rattlers than you do to flies. Do you re- movements. Then I would rum up and kill & 15 that the rat- I put a bat in Doctor mouth, That eases the the snake's mouth. Other men in the member that old black sow we had four the snake for my own uses. Tourists used uthern California thought he'd go cra "N 9 5 chonze thels up In one corner of his cage and 1ally swallowing opel The rattler's jaws mountains tell me they have found snakes years ago, Dan? My gum, but she was to pay me $3 and $4 once in a while to let skin twice a year— hid his head. All he'd do was to can be unhing me way and thelr the same way. wonderful on snakes. She could trail them see how my black sow would go to » * in July ané { was afrald the sc flesh is ble, so can get thelr “How long after the vemom of rattle- snakes up and down this canyon and over work on rattlers out in my farm. The = 4 snake to death, so 1 took 1 mouths over objects many times larger snakes gets in the blood of animals does those foothills like a hound after bear. I pig was always ready for any lark like cage. 1 put the dove in the cage with than themselves. My snake Doctor once it produce death?’ asked the reporter. had to keep her shut up in the corral that. But soms low down cuss t the sow o snake polson work in human beings? ¥hat depends on the condition the is In and the time of year he g poison soaked into his veins. ;,“liu" g 2 § ) = g A stance there was a placer miner that I = ) g ] o ~ . &new perfectly well. He was Hank Ran- X g SN dall. He was ng down to drink &7 “THEDOCTOR® AND HIS CHUM tne Docior, Just 1o see what fe i That dove lived with the skin it will Snake ten months. I'v en seen it. and in pie and Doctor sleep toge sometimes, in on bird being perched on the snake' . I and sometimes wrapped up In his colls. tlers shed At the same t the snake got away But I've Witha gopher, mouse or a little squirrel er he felt lilke eating. An accl. »pened one day and the dove away. Two days later, when Doc- of a spring of water over at B the edge of the Mojave desert, a $ears ago. A rattler lay coiled under a man- sanita bush, and he gave H t in the neck as Hank was Iyl own drinking water from th ank dfed in less 1 3 1 lows sald he went loony with pain. Now that was in the middle of September, the long hot summer had m: poison stronger than usual. Two years ago last month a tourist, who was out getting geological specimens in Simpson’s arroyo, near San Bernardino, stepped on a rattler and got a bite In the leg. There he was seven miles from any whisky or ammonia, and it was over an hour before he was fou “three months Range. heurd ieer old bachelor ana .s sole skins S a green, gaw lad nev ears, whom Abner whe tor was ep in the sunshine, I put man came riding on horseback over another dove in there just exactly like Dan and I were looking for ra the one that flew aws 1 stoc Off at said that I was wanted to help one side 1 waite ec what would ke woke up. J ctor woke. The ger who was bitten by a rattl in half an hour. The man was crazy with pain, and it was an h befors we could get w his throat. We put o and, by gum, b 1 days. Now If he had beer itten th: way along in summer and had not been first-class physical condition, I wouldn't have insured his life for a wag of a dog's tail. “Another thing that the natural history cusses have all wrong, and that's about telling a rattler’s age by Its rattles. Now, I've got In a wire cage in my snake far two snakes that Dan caught about two years ago. They were about ten inches long then, and I know they had nev tasted food. I fed them a ground mouw aplece, and T watched two plump full days to see those littie rattlers eat for the first time. They each had then a soft stub on their taills. Go out and see for g £ you don't believe my word serve four big ratties on on five on the other. Dan and I belie will have several rattles more this year 1 used to have a rattler, w finally killed for his ofl and skin. a ter- rible fast grower. He grew from two feet to over four feet long in one vear. I t over four years old when t he had eight or nine rat- w much 1t how ever eat them- e of a Caltfornia ra et and two inche Union army I sa in the Panhandle of over six feet long. tler in the Pu- ente H hat had twenty-se acket he made with tho like the sound of a the queen. I heard about R of old Abe Lineoln, being in always thought old Abe the biggest and best man that ev Mved. So. a was going to Los An- geles City anyhow to sel ke grease and skine, I thought I would take those wonderful rattles down as a present to old Abe's boy. I sta around the Westminster Hotel all one morning, and a man told me that Mr. Lincoln would #oon come In from a ride. He came back at noon, and he was pointed out to me. So I walked right up to him as he steered threugh the crowd of people on the sidewalk for the hotel door. He thanked me a heap for my gift and sald he would always preserve it among the curiosi- tles he got on the coast.” A Millionaire's Kitchen, Mr. Vanderbilt's kitchen is really very beautiful to the eye. The purity of marble, the luster of tiles and the gleam of metal are what one sees. The floor is of marble, the table, the sinks, all the things that are rarely moved are of marbls and cut with the precision of jewels. The walls are lined with cream enameled tiles, and all the angles are covered with brass moldings. Where the tiles meet the doors and windows they are covered with these metal moldings. The celling fs made of white enameled tiles set in cement. But one does not imperil the head of a $10,000 cook with a loosely set brick, so each tile is secured with ralsed tal bolts. Accent- uating all this gleam of te and metal is the huge double range. It Is set in one cor- ner under a large semi-circular hood, en- riched with emb: opper ornaments and swung from fron bars wrought in spirals and follations. The hood is so powerful an agent In carrying off odor and greas: steam that it 1 aft from the hand a newspaper held un The cooking utensils are in keeping with this eplendor. They are of copper, with wrought-iron handles, many of them eorna- mented. Leading from the kitchen to the butler's pantry are spiral stairs entirely en- closed in glass to shut out possible cdor yet retain the light. And this Is so successfully done that although the kitchen is directly below the dining room and butler’s pantry, nothing disagreeable makes its way. aloft. It is by a hose which may play fearlessly in any vart of the room that the kitchen is kept clean. Con- critters ttached the stomach empty wh en them hunting for something to eat, and I've watched Doctor more times than you've fingers and toes. A mouse every other day will make tler fat in no time. I had my ake ten months before he _mouthful or drank a drop of 2. Arattlesnake has been to remain fourteen months in vy without Ing or drinking, and then all of a sudden begin to find his e. When I put Dactor in at the age of ten months I oung dove in w him. Now, »ve thar. Fl h snake. The that lies in h side of the rat- s Intestines near the backbone. f s tried out carefully in All you have heard g snakes up In the hot . as o I ‘z'renssafn:zl; out nected with the c ine and run down kitchen is a a crock w is infernal non- series of vaults s my adopted son— L1 . how folks think : / These are i o e T etk THE OLD Sow laugh about me prowling about and my gunny- for rattlers. And who run like when they see me WOULD TRAIL ONAKES LIKE A Dog c g a road with my - arcasses. I'm used to be treated so be- dad is a rattle- season opened yet? i say had. Dan got ne day last week and two right in one lit- beyond San Antonio Somehow 1 feel It In my “I have thought a he a p about that, but there's they may be fres of damp, and /ha v e per- t £ to be & big sea- no rule to go hy. Soms o NE L~y . ness. 1 was looking animals and birds will keel ates The at m r this morning and, right over dead as a boulder; owners heavier ar- by & € e best cond! live for hours and da: oo t n h two years- well in a tew hours. There were those as ice and 1 k and eyes bright. two mules of Colonel Fellows down in meat, are as_ pack snakes are thriving Fl Monte last summer. Both were Wit Pet i find a lot of fat in by rattlers and both died in two hours. through what - makss .Ehe I've known dozens of mules to be bitten s hele ou know. fore, and they wer o all well again In & m the rd about my pet y or so. Last fall I saw Doctor, my PAYe snake, u? Lots of people snake, give a little gopher a big bite and et have ear ‘Doctor.’ That lots of poison, but the gopher lived for a 7 with der- what 1 I wouldn't sell whole day. I have known a rat to die five > Ack and ‘I best horse and minutes after Doctor set his fangs in his v',o‘, dft, which buge Bernardino Valley, neck, and I have known one to live morc 0% %% refleves the kitchen About ow about snakes’ than a day after being struck. I turned e b, BNEQ ™o of a good deal of un- habits arped from him. ' little bantam hen Into Doctor’s ‘cage one T (\E—- pleasantness, as every He's « a wire cage, and day, and when he struck her it made her so housekeeper may im- every day I'm home I go and see mad that she turned and pitched into him so . how he's getting along. I've r 4 flercely that she drove him into a corner bleeding when I couldn’t D& sYong with her Bes ——— ke a stuck plg. I was afrald this excited little fowl cause she'd go trailing rattlers and would would kill him and I took her out soon as I could. eat them up before I had a chance to get 4&he kee.ed over an hour afterward, and I supposed of the fat out of tefen. Don’t you know, Dan, ewurse that she was done for with all that rattlesnake polson how we found so many rattlers’ heads about I her, but she lived three days in a stupor and then gradually the hills and canyons, that we saw how tAs “Tell him about how them air hogs go for rattlers, pop.” old sow was killing off our crop of snakes and “Doctor’ from the time he was twe* months old, and I got him in a nest after 1 hed killed off the mother. Dak and 1 are so attached to ‘Doctor’ that we would let the whole snake farm go rather than lose him. h But we bave to be careful, for he's got powerful fangs, and got well. In. proportion to its size England has eight times as y many miles of rafl- way as the United B /,{_..~