Snakes of the Week

Bush Masters, Dr. Raymond Lee Ditmars, curator of mammals & reptiles at New York City's zoo, announced last week he would leave next month for Panama to hunt the bush master, largest, deadliest of vipers. Sometimes 12 ft. long with 2-in. fangs, the bush master carries enough venom to kill a man in less than five minutes. (Dr. Ditmars once saw a companion so killed.) The bush master is a cousin of the cobra, carries a spine on the end of his tail. Usually reddish brown, he may be pinkish with black splotches. "Some of them are the color of canned salmon," said Dr. Ditmars. "A very handsome, calm and insolent snake." Rare, bush masters live only in the tropics. Within the last year Dr. Ditmars got word that seven had been killed near Panama's Chagres River. He has hired a convict to take him to the spot where the last one was slain.

Cobras. Snakeman Ditmars last week introduced a new cobra to his zoo, housed him in a cage with an old cobra named Beelzebub. Within a few minutes both cobras were spitting & biting, tying each other into angry knots. Dr. Ditmars watched impassively. "Let them fight it out," said he. "That's the only way they'll get used to each other." At length Beelzebub crawled off into a corner of the cage, his head bloody & swollen. Dr. Ditmars fed him a six-foot gopher snake, turned a hose on his conqueror.

Pythons. In Philadelphia two pythons had lived in the same cage in lethargic harmony for four years. One was 20 ft. long; the other 18 ft. The 20-ft. python had eaten recently, and since pythons are seldom hungry keepers put a single 25-lb. pig in the cage for the smaller one. Next morning that python lay in a corner squeezed to death. His larger friend was coiled contentedly in the opposite corner. A bulge in his middle showed who got the pig.

In Baltimore last week arrived the steamship City of Elwood with one python. When the City of Elwood left Shanghai it had two pythons aboard. One escaped in Manila, wandered ashore. Near a native's hut it saw a pig, which it swallowed. The pig was tied to the hut. Three days later the native found the python dying of indigestion.

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