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"By-and-by a king-snake swimmed over to our island, and tuck up his abode in a hole in a log. The cuss got kind of affectionate, and after a while crawled right into our hut to catch flies and other varmin. At last he got so tame he'd let me scratch his back. Then he tuck to our moss bed, and used up a considerable portion of his time there.
I believe it afterward died, but unfortunately I have mislaid my notes and cannot now remember the details of the incident. Doctor Brazil informed me that the mussurama, like the king-snake, was not immune to the colubrine poison.
There are other snakes, however, of which the mussurama is perhaps the best example, which are very good captives, and at the same time very fearless, showing a complete indifference not only to being observed but to being handled when they are feeding. There is in the United States a beautiful and attractive snake, the king-snake, with much the same habits as the mussurama.
The children were strictly trained not to interrupt business, but on this particular occasion the little boy's feelings overcame him. He had been loaned a king-snake, which, as all nature-lovers know, is not only a useful but a beautiful snake, very friendly to human beings; and he came rushing home to show the treasure.
They are good-natured and can generally be handled with impunity, but I have known them to bite, whereas Doctor Brazil informed me that it was almost impossible to make the mussurama bite a man. The king-snake will feed greedily on other snakes in the presence of man I knew of one case where it partly swallowed another snake while both were in a small boy's pocket.
Related, in tradition, to the horse was the king-snake of Carib myth, a frightful creature that wore a brilliant stone in its head, which it usually concealed with a lid, like that of the eye, but which it would uncover when it went to a river to drink, or played about the hills. Whoever looked on this dazzling stone would lose his sight on the instant.
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