Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1894 — ONLY A GIRL. [ARTICLE]

ONLY A GIRL.

But She Has a Record for Killing Rattlesnakes. The town of Liberty, in New York, claims the champion rattlesnake hunter in the person of sixteen-year-old Mary Burton. Early last summer she 1 killed a rattlesnake in her father’s yard and cut off the rattles. Since then she has developed a craze for collecting the rattles of these snakes, and spends her time hunting the venomous reptiles. Up to date she has killed twenty-eight rattlesnakes, and from them has obtained twenty perfectly matched sets of rattles. Each apt has nine rattles or segments. The other eight sets are odd ones, rang* log from four to ten rattles in a set The women of that part of the state seem to have taken an amazing courage in dealing with snakes. A report from Hancock says that Mrs. Frank Tower, of that place, was on her way home after dark one evening whecf x she heard a rattlesnake sound its rattles in the weeds at the roadside. She hurried home, said nothing to any one, got a lantern and a club, and returned'to the spot where she heard the rattler. It was there still and sprang its rattles as soon as Mrs. Tower approached. She turned her light on it, saw it lying coiled ready to strike, and smashed its head with a club. The snake was an immense fellow, measuring over five feet, but it carried only nine rattles. A young girl named Henrietta Quick, across the Delaware in Lackawaxen, Penn., heard a noise among her chickens. She went out and saw a rattlesnake maneuvering to capture one. She cut its head off with a hoe. This one had thirteen rattles.