THE HABITS OF WATER MOCCASINS [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] SIR,--The bite of the common water moccasin of our Eastern Virginia ponds and streams is not poisonous to man. The snake is none the less viewed with deep suspicion, if not actual dread, by the majority of the country folk, especially the negroes. It is ugly and extremely active, and vicious in its attack upon its prey. In spite of these characteristics its life is a precarious one and is. far from being that of a master of its surroundings.
The following observations were gathered from my fishing friends. Mr. L. of Louisa Co., Va., one June morning provided himself with a fishing pole and a frying pan and betook himself to the banks of a small stream to enjoy the pleasures of an at fresco lunch of which fish were to be the piece de resistance. Fortune favoured him and by midday he had caught several tine pike. He selected the largest and proceeded to dress it. While doing so he discovered, coiled in its stomach, a water moccasin. Never since has he been persuaded that pike is an edible fish. Mr. 'L. Christian, of Richniond, 'Virginia, an ardent fisherman and microscopist, one day noticed near the bank of an otherwise still pond not far from Providence Forge, Virginia, a considerable local churning up of the surface of the water. His curiosity prompted him to investigate. The disturbance was due to the efforts of a large moedasin to bring to the shore an equally large eel, which resisted to its uttermost. As the struggle progressed Mr. C. noticed that gradually the eel came nearer and nearer the bank. When they reached-the edge' of the mud the snake suddenly wrapped his tail around a bush, drew the eel ashore and proceeded to swallow it. Mr. L. S. StrausS, of Richniond, Virginia, was one day watching the ascent of innumerable small eels up the face of the stone dam which holds back the'waters of the pond in the grounds of the Lakeside Country Club. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a large moccasin lying on a flat stone below the dam. The moccasin, whose middle was much distended, when approached was loath to move. It was killed, and the distension proved to be caused by a mass of eels which had been selected from the many migrating into the pond above.
The moccasin is a superb fisherman. He dives into the water from the limb of an overhanging bush, seizes his prey with his teeth and carries it ashore, where it is swallowed. Not always, however, does the snake escape unscathed from the struggle. Mr. Roland Norman, of King and Queen County, Virginia, was walking along the edge of a fishing pond not far from his home when he noticed near the shore a feeble movement in the water. This was caused by the tail of a catfish whose head and body beyond the lateral fins had been swallowed by a large moccasin. The snake was dead ; the resisting catfish had spread his fins, which had pierced on either side the throat of the snake. This had prevented the further swallowing of the fish. Mr. NorMan pulled the pait ashore and released the fish, which swam away.
A moccasin seems to swallow a frog head first or hind legs first, indifferently. Thus " the twinkling black eyes " of a toad may be almost the last view one obtains as it disappears down the throat of a snake or—but this is a story that deserves a paragraph to itself.
I had often heard in my boyhood of a horned snake, but it was like the purple cow : I never thought to see one. By the banks of the beautiful little Dee River in the Muskoka country of Canada I was walking one afternoon when my eyes beheld in the grass an eighteen-inch-long snake, from either side of. whose head protruded a two-tined horn 'an inch long—my homed snake at last' ! I struck it with my walking stick. As I did so there backed out of the snake's mouth a Water frog, whose long toes were my horns.
The scene of my Last story was one of the narrow canals which serve to drain the low grounds of Meadowville, Virginia. Mr. X was fishing there, using earth worms for bait. Ile caught a small fish and for some unaccountable reason, without removing the hook from the fish's throat, cut off about two feet of the line and, tying it to an-overhanging, swinging limb, left it. Some hours later he returned to find the water under the limb violently agitated. Examination showed that a moccasin had swallowed the fish which the hook firmly held. Again, for no definite reason, he left the live snake to its fate. Passing the spot the next day he noticed that the end of the limb was now drawn down into the water. Taking hold of the line he drew it upwards to find that a large turtle had swallowed the snake, and incidentally the fish and the hook. This story serves to illustrate the struggle for existence as it is being daily carried out in -the warm waters of our Eastern
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