Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1874 — Crazy Animals. [ARTICLE]

Crazy Animals.

In some districts in California there is a plant called the “ rattleweed,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle,: producing a most upon the intellectual and physical health of horned cattle. The “ rattleweed” grows to the height of about eighteen inches, and has a leaf similar to that of the lupine. It has an immense number of pods, which are of a light brown color when ripe, and of a three-sided form, like the Brazil nut. These pods do not crack open when ripe and dry, and as every pod contains half a dozen or so small, loose seeds it forms a rattle producing, when touched or moved by the wind, a dear, sharp -sound, resembling the warning of the rattlesnake. It is found—sometimes in small detached clumps, and sometimes in patches covering many acres —inKeru,Tulaire, Fresno and Monterey Counties, and in the northern part of Los Angeles. The effect of this weed when eaten by animals is to produce insanity, or, to speak more accurately, it appears to derange and befog their* instincts, and, judging from their actions, fills them with delusions. When thus affected, many of them die; but whether death is the direct effect of the poison, or whether it results from their inability to procure water and food, is as yet unknown. Several hundred horses have lately died from the effects of this weed in the southern part of Monterey County, and a correspondent of the Chronicle, who lately lost fifty horses on one ranche from the same cause, describes the symptoms that were observed in the ill-fated animals previous to their decease. They became, he says, crazy, forsook the land, and wandered one by one over the plain, paying no attention to their mates or to anything else. They were too muddled in their brains to seek for water and most of them died of thirst. Although they were wild, and had never been handled, any person could walk up to them on tjie plain and hit them with the hand, when they would jump, perhaps straight up in the air, perhaps some other way, and go off as though they were trying to leap over a fence at every step. They seemed to retain their sight yet would not turn aside for anything. The poor, demented beasts would walk over a precipice “as placidly and deliberately as a San Francisco free-luncher would advance upon a whisky bottle.”