Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1901 — A RATTLER ON HIS BREAST. [ARTICLE]

A RATTLER ON HIS BREAST.

A Remarkable Fight tVltaeeeed by a Proapeetor la Arizona. A rattler, a king snake, and a road runner recently figured In a battle part of which was waged on the breast of Herbert Housland, a prospector in Arizona. The king snake Is a deadly enemy of the ratt'er. The experience of Housland was had in the Bradshaw mountains. He was guarding his party's camp for the day and had lain down to sleep when he was suddenly aroused to find a great rattler colled upon his breast. “I almost suffocated from fearing to breathe lest I should be bitten,’* he said. "The snake was greatly excited and in a minute I saw the cause, A king snake was trying to exbite the rattler to combat, and my person was the chosen battle ground. The king snake had probably forced the rattler to refuge upon my body, and following up his aggressive tactics was running In a circle around the rattler very rabidly. He crossed my breast from left to right and my thighs from right to left, and within less than a foot of the rattler’s body. The velocity of the snake was most wonderful. It seemed to be one continuous ring, and part of the time I could seemingly see three or four rings at once. I made a slight movement with my right foot which attracted the rattler’s attention for an instant, and that was fatal to him. At that one false movement Of his eyes, the king snake darted in and seized the rattler by the throat, close up to his head and began Instantly to coll around his victim. They rolled off me in their death struggle and became one tangled mass for ten minutes, when the rattler's sounds died away gradually. While I lay exhausted from my fright a road runner darted out of a bush and grabbing the two snakes in his beak, began to drag them away. The weight ;was too great but he killed the king snake by a blow from his long bill, and ran away as I arose. I threw the two reptiles into the bushes, and there the bird and his mate devoured them."