RATTLESNAKE DEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 13 (Supplement)

RATTLESNAKE DEN.

BUZZING LIKE BEE SWARM. REPTILES GATHER IN LAIRS. SCIENTIST ■ VERIFIES STORIES. If .a,' man reports having seen a legion of rattlesnakes sitting around in circles with tails buzzing like a swarm of bees, don't be too sure that he has indigestion or is suffering from the heat. For many years naturalists have tended to scoff at the idea that rattle-snakes-congregated in dene, in spite of occasional rumours and uncoitfumed Ss to thiseffect, because there never has been a scientific and authoritative liesciMptionofsuchafindbyatramed observer. Curator Stories. But this incredulity has been dissipated. You may believe your eyes, the next time rattlers swarm around you feet like a school of mackerel, l<ol E. Raymond Hall, curator of mammals in the University of California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, has- reported the finding of a den that contained scores of rattled. As evidence of the find he took back twenty-five rattlesnakes with "Hall explains that he.and Ward C. Russell, a student.: at, the university, were making.a collection of specimens in the vicinity of Wheeler Peak, Is evada, when they .were .told of a den of rattlesnakes -which' residents of the town of Ely, seven miles ' away, had attacked with, rifles,.'shotguns and dynamite without avail. • • - 149 /Previously Slain. Their informant,; Lloyd Robisou, county o-ame warden, stated that 140 snakes had been killed two days before, but it had not made much difference, for Hall and Russell found approximately fifty more sitting on their tails with heads in air when they arrived. The"den is situated at the south den of a.butte in Spring Valley, White Pine County, Nevada, about 250 yards from the Pike's Peak- Highway. The den : proper is a sunken place in the ground which lias, been blasted open several : tiines with tlynamite in an attempt to kill the. inmates. The snakes were very slow and clumsy, Hall says, and, by stepping carefully, they managed to approach the den with ankle shoes and no. leggings. They were armed with pistols loaded with the finest bird, shot and killed twenty-five of the. reptiles before they retired. '.: Hall learned that the site of the den was discovered five years ago by two sheep herders, Doyle C.-Robinson and W. G. Kirkland, who thought the rattling was caused by a swarm of bees. Each year . sorties Jiaye,, been made against the snakes'in the spring and fall, but it has been found impossible to kill them off. Hall eays that they probably, pass the whiter'in , the den and spread out over" the valley in the summer. , ,