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Updated: May 2, 2025
It was not a thick blunt-bodied serpent like our venomous pit-viper, our largest snake, and though in shape it conformed to our two common harmless species it was twice as big as the biggest specimens I had ever seen of them.
The snake was the dreaded vivora de la cruz, as the gauchos call it, a pit-viper of the same family as the fer-de-lance, the bush-master, and the rattlesnake. It was about three feet long, very thick in proportion, and with broad head and blunt tail.
The Indian hamadryad, or giant cobra, is exclusively a snake-eater. It evidently draws a sharp distinction between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, for Mr. Ditmars has recorded that two individuals in the Bronx Zoo which are habitually fed on harmless snakes, and attack them eagerly, refused to attack a copperhead which was thrown into their cage, being evidently afraid of this pit-viper.
And at the odor his fists tightened in new fear. For no serpents give off that peculiar odor. except members of the pit-viper family. "They're not rattlesnakes," he told himself. "For a scared or angry rattler would have this room vibrating with his whirr. We're too far south for copperheads. The the only other pit-viper I ever heard of in Florida is the cotton-mouth moccasin!"
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