PESTS OF THE PLAINS.

1895

The Rattlesnake's Sting and the Bite of the Hydrophobia Skunk.

Major Wilcox, a veteran surgeon from Fort Huachuca, told the other day of the red racer snake, a deadly foe of the rattlesnake and who fights the latter on every occasion. He cannot kill the rattler by a poisonous sting, but awaiting an opportunity seizes his victim behind the head and gives it a crushing squeeze in his powerful jaws. This severs the rattlesnake's spinal cord and causes death. The red racer then swallows the rattler, poison and all. Occasionally, when in the field, Major Wilcox treated soldiers for rattlesnake bites and found it easy to overcome the effects of the poison.

One day a private came to him with a wound from a rattlesnake's fangs in his index finger. The major hastily scarified the wound, broke open a rifle cartridge, poured powder over the wound and exploded it. This cauterized the injured part and so effectually dispelled the poison that only one-half the hand was swollen. The patient soon recovered. On another occasion a man cut off a rattlesnake's head, and, desiring to preserve it, packed cotton into the dead snake's mouth. The jaws closed upon the man's fingers, inflicting a wound from which he soon died.

Rancher Leonard, owner of a vast cattle range in New Mexico, in recounting his experiences on the plains, remarked that he feared the hydrophobia skunk far more than he did the rattlesnake. The snake gives warning of his presence; the skunk does not. This variety of skunk is not only vicious, but aggressive, while the rattlesnake seldom attacks unless disturbed. The hydrophobia skunk is probably the only animal, excepting the coyote, west of the Rocky mountains whose bite induces rabies. Besides this and because of its fondness for occupying the tents of frontiersmen at night, the animal is much dreaded.

Occasionally a coyote will "run mad" and bite another, and thus hydrophobia is communicated to large packs of the fleet footed animals and they race over the prairies and mesas, making mad every living creature in their pathway that they happen to bite. One of the amusements of the cowboys is to capture a rattler alive and get the creature drunk. With a forked stick the snake's head is held down, its mouth is forced open and whisky poured down its throat in sufficient quantity to intoxicate it. The snake will then try to coil its body as if to go to sleep. The action of the alcohol makes it "groggy" and the coils won't coil. When a stick is shoved before the snake's nose, it tries to strike, but the head and body wobble from side to side much as does a drunken man in his attempt to reach a lamppost. — San Francisco Chronicle.

Mad Skunk Bites Laborer

1916

Victim of Animal's Attack Made Dangerously Ill.

JUDKINS, Texas — Bennie Adams of Judkins was bitten in the nose by a skunk while asleep in his bedding in a camp where he was helping to drill a well for a ranchman. Young Adams was soundly asleep and was awakened by a vicious bite upon his nose. He yelled as he leaped to his feet, calling for assistance while the skunk which had thoroly fastened his teeth in the boy's nose tenaciously held on and continued to do so until choked loose. Adams was sent to Pasteur Institute at Austin and was reported dangerously ill by the physicians who telegraphed his parents to come.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 11.

Gas Masks Are Urged for Mail Train Men

1920

Skunk Pelts in Parcel Post Cause of Woeful Wail

LOCKHART, Texas, Feb. 26. — Bring out the gas masks, for they are sorely needed.

Mail clerks running on trains in the lower part of the State are said to have asked Superintendent Gaines of Ft. Worth to give them protection.

They declare they have been so badly "gassed" by the fumes of skunk hides that they are now incapacitated for further duties unless the proper protection is given them. They have suggested to the district superintendent that U. S. Army gas masks be secured for them to wear during the distribution of the mails.

Skunk hides, say the mail clerks, do not lose their flavor in packing for shipment. Hence, the closed mail cars, as they went their way to the markets of the North, fairly reek with the odor of polecats.

One of the clerks making this station declares the sickening odor of polecat hides, bunches of them, he had to handle on a recent trip, made him so weak that he was compelled to quit the run before he had half completed it.

Farmer Solves Mystery of Disappearing Chickens

Indiana, 1906

CAUGHT CHICKEN THIEF

Thomas Covington Solves Mystery of Disappearing Fowls

Repeated thefts of chickens from the farm of Thomas Covington, on the Covington road, west of the city, were solved this morning when Mr. Covington discovered that a steel trap which he had set last night to catch the thief had been drawn entirely through the small opening into the chicken-roost. Mr. Covington in triumph drew the trap and its prisoner into open daylight, acquiring at the same time a knowledge of the identity of the thief and a closer and more intimate acquaintance with a member of the skunk family than he had ever before enjoyed during his long experience as a farmer.

—The Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Feb. 24, 1906, p. 1.

Student Trappers Coming to School with Smell of Skunks

1919--

PELT HUNTERS IN BAD

Nashville. Ind.—The skunks of central Indiana are on the point of breaking up the high school at Nashville. The school board has been called to sit on the situation, and, holding its nose, is expected shortly to hand down a ruling disposing of the skunks. It appears that the high school boys have found that skunk pelts are valuable, and all fall they have been conducting night hunts through the woods in search of the creatures. No one objected to their enterprise until they began to straggle into the schoolrooms of a morning with a reminiscent odor of the chase that demoralized the classrooms. Teachers stormed, but fragrant youth insisted on its right to go hunting. The matter was then put up to the school board for settlement.

--Ironwood Daily Globe, Ironwood, Michigan, November 20, 1919, page 7.