Two Husbands Killed by Same Rattlesnake

1916

Woman Made Widow Second Time — Reptile Is Then Captured and Slain.

HATTIESBURG, Mississippi. — W. C. Cole, Hattiesburg grocer, has just received a dead rattlesnake which he says was responsible for the death of two husbands of a woman in the logging camps of Mississippi.

"I do not want to mention the woman's name," said Mr. Cole, "as she begged me not to. Some two years ago her husband was killed by a snake while logging. He was bitten, the fangs of the snake penetrating a high top boot.

"After his death another lumberman married the woman. Being poor, she offered him her dead husband's high top boots. He accepted them. He died a few days later from snake poisoning. It was found that the fang of the snake was imbedded in the boot and had penetrated the flesh of the second husband, also poisoning him."

Mr. Cole says this is the first case of the kind he ever heard and that several hunters captured and killed the snake.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 7.

A Rattlesnake Story

1910

In "Life and Sport on the Pacific Coast" Horace A. Vachell relates one of his narrow escapes from a friend's bullet.

"My cousin and I had been camping and hunting for several days in a sort of paradise valley. One day during a long ride on horseback we had seen a great many rattlesnakes and killed a few, an exceptional experience. That night my cousin woke up and saw by the light of the moon a big rattler crawling across my chest. He lay for a moment fascinated, horror struck, watching the sinuous curves of the reptile. Then he quietly reached for his six shooter, but he could not see the reptile's head, and he moved nearer, noiselessly, yet quickly, dreading some movement on my part that should precipitate the very thing he dreaded, and then he saw that it was not a snake at all — only the black and yellow stripe of my blanket, which gently rose and fell as I breathed. Had he fired — well, it might have been bad for me, for he confessed that his hand shook."

Rattlesnake Holds Up Motorists

VINELAND, N.J., Nov. 3 -- Stanley Fox and Saul North were held up recently by a 4½-foot rattlesnake in the woods a few miles east of here. The snake was coiled in the sunshine on an old wood road and the whirr of the automobile seemed to irritate it. Several times the young men attempted to run over it, but desisted, because they were afraid it would jump into the machine. After a lively fight North landed a knockout blow. The snake had eight rattles.

--Des Moines Register, Nov. 4, 1917