The Salt Lake Herald

REPTILES WITH DAINTY APPETITES
False Notions Concerning Snakes Dispelled by an Old Keeper.
"More sheer nonsense has been written about snakes than about any other creatures in the known world, with the possible exception of sea serpents, which are nothing but snakes after all. Nine people out of ten will believe almost anything about snakes simply because they don't know anything about them, and they will not try to learn."
Superintendent A. E. Brown, of the Zoological Garden, sat under a tree near the snake house at the Zoo yesterday afternoon, with a small river snake in one hand and a fan in the other. He was endeavoring to keep cool and at the same time examine the squirming little reptile which he had carried from the river bank.
"He seems to be all right," said he, holding the snake out by the tail. "and I guess he will do to put in with the family. That old lady over there looks at me as though I were a wizard. She has doubtless read of wonderful things about snakes, and if a harmless little wriggler should go near her she would run for her life. She isn't to blame, though. The fault is with the manner in which she was taught in childhood. Ever since the world has existed snakes have been held in abhorrence by man and monkeys. No other animal pays the slightest attention to the crawling things. The idea that all snakes are poisonous is preposterous. There are but three or four venomous kinds of snakes in North America, of which the rattlesnake and the copperhead are the worst. The remainder of the crawling things in this country are little to be feared. But here comes the snake-keeper; he can tell you more about beasts and reptiles than you could publish in a week."
T. C. Sheppard, the keeper, came up with a Colorado horned toad in his hands and a couple of lizards in his vest pocket, while an inquisitive turtle poked its head out of his coat pocket, as if meditating an assault on the nearest lizard. There was nothing of the snake charmer about him in appearance, although he has been a keeper in the Zoo for six years and has had considerable experience in private gardens in Europe.
"Come into the snake house until I put this turtle and that snake Mr. Brown has into the case," said he, "and then I will be at liberty."
AMONG THE SNAKES.
The small building was well filled with visitors, mostly ladies and children. In the centre of the room the boas, securely caged, were surrounded by an awe-stricken crowd of children, who looked askance at the heavy folds and small glistening eyes of the fabled equatorial monsters. Snakes and lizards and frogs and all manner of creeping things were ranged around the room in glass cages, and a more terror-inspiring set of creatures never haunted the dreams of the too-ardent disciple of the flowing bowl.
"This little brown-skinned thing with the big head is a young rattlesnake," said Sheppard. "It is the last one of sixteen that saw light of day in this zoo. All the rest are dead, but this one, I am confident, will live. The rattlesnake feeds on birds and birds' eggs: so also do the chicken and pine snakes. Tree-climbing snakes, while in the trees, feed on nothing but birds, but when they are on the ground they will tackle anything from a field mouse up to a rat. Snakes always kill their own food. It is a rare thing for them to eat dead food. They can be starved into it, but they do not thrive well on anything they do not kill. An appetite in a snake is a poor institution. Sometimes snakes feed every other day and sometimes every two or three weeks. I have known them to go a year without food. You see they are captured in good condition, and their fat keeps them a long time. They do not have to keep up a temperature at all. I never knew a banded rattlesnake to feed after being captured. Now you see this bird? Well, watch while I put it into the rattlesnake's cage."
The unsuspecting sparrow was thrust through the glass door of the cage. Two or three women saw the action and immediately went into a mild form of hysteria.
"Oh, my! Look at the poor little thing! Oh, the cruel man: how could he do such a thing? Somebody take it away: it will be swallowed alive!"
The bird paid not the slightest attention to the snakes, and seemed not afraid. The snakes were not hungry, or the bird would have been killed and swallowed. Sheppard laughed.
FRIGHTENED WOMEN
"Women always go into fits over a little bird," said he. "I never knew one of them to fail. If I put a frog in the cage they look on and say: 'Oh, the ugly toad. How I wish the snake would eat it right now.' There's a difference in birds and frogs, you see. Here are two pine snakes brought over from New Jersey-you may perhaps have heard of the place. The pine grows to a larger size than any snake in the country, though there is a snake of the same species in Arkansas that grows as large. The largest one in these parts was eight feet and eight inches long, and was owned by a man in Vincentown.
"People have some queer ideas of snakes. Almost anybody can see the green slime about them. I never could, though, and then you have heard about a snake covering its food with saliva to assist in swallowing. That's all nonsense. A snake's organs of salivation are inadequate for such a task, and the tongue is of a wrong shape."
"And then we hear a great deal about hoop-snakes," said Mr. Brown, "a snake that takes its horned tail in its mouth, forms itself into a hoop-like shape and rolls over the country dealing death with its poisonous tail. You may say through the columns of the Times that we will pay a handsome price for a real genuine hoop-snake -one that will take his tail in his mouth and chase a man about the garden. We are longing for just such a snake. If some man will bring along a snake of that description we will set apart a place for him to run in, and provide people for him to poison with his death-dealing horn. The Smithsonian institution would give $5,000 for such a snake,"
laughed Sheppard.
"Another common superstition," continued Mr. Brown, is that the boa-constrictor goes about in his native forests seeking horses and cattle and human beings. It is all nonsense. That big fellow in there got a rabbit the other day that was too much for him. He seized the rabbit by the head, and throwing a coil around it drew it out to the required size, breaking but one bone. We give them rats, small guinea-pigs and much the same kind of food as we give the others. A snake is a snake, be it large or small."
A curious Central American black iguana, concerning which a man and his wife were warmly disputing.
"It's an alligator, I say," asserted the husband.
"An alligator! Hear him! It's a crocodile, I tell you," retorted the wife.
"You're both wrong," interposed a Boston student. "The animal is a lizard."-Philadelphia Times.