People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1893 — FIGHTING A SNAKE. [ARTICLE]

FIGHTING A SNAKE.

His Head Is Hard But -Its Tall Is Tender. If any reader of this article should ever be so unfortunate as to experience the embrace of a boa constrictor it is recommended that he try to release himself by taking hold of the creature’s tail and unwinding it from that end. It can be easily unwound in that way, but otherwise this is not possible. The way to kill a snake is not to attempt to crush its, head, the bones of whish are very hard, but to strikq the tail, where the spinal cord is but thinly covered by bone and suffers readily from injury. It is the same with an eel. Hit the tail two or three times against any hard substance and it quickly dies. The boas are not venomous, but theli fangs are sufficiently powerful t<o inflict /serious wounds, and large specimens have been known to swallow men whole. The case is related by the traveler Gironiere of a criminal in the Philippine islands who hid from justice in a cavern. His father, who alone knew of his hiding-place, went sometimes to see him and take him rice foi food. One day he found instead of his son an enormous boa asleep. He killed it and found his son's body ki the snake’s stomach. Serpents sometimes swallow prey so much too big for their digestions that they actually burst from repletion. The instance is recorded of a boa eonstrictoi which swallowed a goat the horns of which pierced the monster and killed him. —Yankee Blade.