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Shelby County |
CHAPTER IV -- FAUNA AND FLORAY (Cont'd)REPTILES, ETC.The lizard, sometimes called a newt, or "ground pup," having its habitat on the upland, is said yet to be found in Shelby county, and is a most repulsive-looking animal. The rattlesnake was exceedingly common on the prairie while it was being broken up, and for some years thereafter. One of the habits of this reptile was to crawl under grain that had been raked off the platform to the ground by the old McCormick reaper. Many a man binding grain, picking up an armful of grain with a rattlesnake in it, or, seeing one on the ground where the grain had lain, suddenly found himself short on nerve. According to one of the local newspapers of the county, ten rattlesnakes were killed on the farm of L. Neff. in Clay township, August 13, 1878. They were in the harvest field under one sheaf of wheat. The editor warns people to be careful in handling grain that has lain on the ground for any length of time. Men on the prairie were more or less frequently bitten by the rattlesnake, but the author has not come across any deaths from this cause. Whiskey was a popular remedy, and for years pioneers were wont to refer to whiskey in the house as an antidote for "snake-bite." Among those who were bitten by rattlesnakes was D. S. Irwin, of Irwin, Iowa. Mrs. A. N. Buckman, of Douglas township, on November 20, 1873, wounded a rattlesnake in her garden with a hatchet and picked up in her fingers that part of the snake having the head attached and received the fangs in her hand. She was very sick for a long time. Mrs. Christian Goodyear, a sister of T. J. Wyland and daughter of Jonathan Wyland, now a resident of Omaha, Nebraska, recalls that her little daughters, who had been sent to the potato patch to pick potato bugs, came into the house saying that they had "surely" heard the "rattle" of a snake. Mrs. Goodyear was rather inclined to think that the girls wanted an excuse for quitting work, but, giving them the benefit of the doubt, she herself went to the garden and picking up one of the potato plants she saw a large sized rattlesnake at the base of the plant at about the spot the girls had reported having heard one. The snake struck at the hoe which Mrs. Goodyear had, but she remarks, with a real twinkle of satisfaction in her eye, that the next stroke was hers, killing the unwelcome intruder with her hoe. The rattlesnake so late as 1909 was not extinct in Shelby county, since in that year fifteen were killed in Jefferson and Douglas townships by Glen Fairchild, Harold Spurgeon, Cassie Armentrout and Roy Potter, the boys receiving the statutory bounty of fifty cents apiece. None have since been reported at the auditor's office. These rattlesnakes were killed in the months of July, August, September, October and one in the month of December. The author of this history takes some pride in the list of cuts of the pioneer wild animals which many of the present generation of Shelby county boys and girls will never see in the flesh. Most of these cuts were made from photographs of mounted specimens in the great museum of the State University of Iowa, at Iowa City, through the courtesy of Prof. C. C. Nutting, one of the most distinguished zoologists of America, a contributor to the Century and other leading magazines, and a man held in high regard by the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D. C, the great repository, source and inspiration of the best scientific thought of this country. Professor Nutting passed upon the photographs and named the specimens represented. Acknowledgment of courtesies extended is also due Alfred Bailey, of Iowa City. Transcribed by Cheryl Siebrass, October, 2024 from the Past and Present of Shelby County, Iowa, by Edward S. White, P.A., LL. B.,Volume 1, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1915, pp. 82-83. |
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