The Conservative Cave
Interests => The Science Club => Topic started by: franksolich on January 27, 2012, 03:05:55 PM
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The other day, I found a book, The Cattlemen, by Mari Sandoz, that had been given my father as a birthday present by employees of the hospital way back in 1966.
Now, The Cattlemen is a classic written by the best author ever to come out of Nebraska, but for one reason or another, I never read it until now--although I've read pretty much all the rest of Sandoz's books.
(dutch508 by the way lives only a few miles away from the Sandoz homestead, on the western slope of the Sandhills of Nebraska.)
There was one comment she made, concerning rattlesnakes, that seems preposterous to me.
Now, I am probably one of only six or half a dozen native Nebraskans who has never in his life seen a tornado or a live rattlesnake (most, even those living in urban Omaha and Lincoln, have seen both); I dunno why that is, it just hasn't ever happened.
And Mari Sandoz (1896-1966), because of where she was born and grew up, was practically on a first-name basis with rattlesnakes, although for obvious reasons it wasn't any associations she was enthusiastic about.
I also must add that Mari Sandoz was notorious for being a very careful fact-checker, obsessed with ensuring that whatever she wrote was wholly accurate.
Okay, so in the book, she describes cattlemen from Texas trying out the Chisholm Trail after it was first devised during the late 1860s, when the land was still wild and raw. One time they came upon a herd of stampeding mustangs, barely escaping damage from that fracas.
I'm assuming this was in northern Texas or southern Kansas.
And then she goes on to describe the sight of the cowboys and cattle being spooked by the tell-tale hiss and rattle of something all too familiar to them. Upon cautious investigation, they find a nine-foot-long rattlesnake, its back broken by the hooves of the mustangs, but still very much alive and spitting venom.
She writes that it was as thick as a man's thigh.
No way.
But it's Mari Sandoz, remember, who was scrupulous about checking facts and avoiding hyperbole. She doesn't have it in quotation marks--"as thick as a man's thigh"--as of the speculation of a first-hand observer of the phenomenon, but rather as a clear and straightforward statement of fact.
I can't believe it, but it was Mari Sandoz who wrote it.
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I have never seen a rattlesnake of any species larger than 7 ft. even at places like the Okeene Rattlesnake Round-up (which is pert near the Chisholm Trail's route through OK.)
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I have never seen a rattlesnake of any species larger than 7 ft. even at places like the Okeene Rattlesnake Round-up (which is pert near the Chisholm Trail's route through OK.)
I'm having no trouble, no trouble at all, accepting the length as described, nine feet long.
I'm having considerable trouble accepting that it was as thick as a man's thigh.
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Rattler (http://www.gunslot.com/pictures/rattlesnake-curled-between-tires)
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30 miles east of here in the sandhills of SC is a little community called "Rattlesnake". I have done some work in that area over the years. An old woman with no reason to lie about it told me of killing a large rattlesnake. She heard the hogs in the pen having a fit about something. She went to down to see why they were upset. There was a rattlesnake about 7 to 8 feet long hung in the 4" hogwire fence. The snake was to big to pass through and couldn't back out. She killed the snake and I can't remember how many rattles she said it had. My mother came out of the sandhills of SC...they raise'em tough down there. :-)
I saw one in the back of a Toyota pickup that had been killed in a swamp in the lower part of the state. That one was probably 8 feet long and pretty big around. He was about the size of my thigh..........................when I was younger. :-)
Most of the so called big rattlesnakes that I have seen/encountered have been around 5 feet long, give or take a few inches.
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The biggest species in OK is the Western Diamondbacks. We don't have the Easterns here.
http://www.uta.edu/biology/herpetology/western_diamondback_rattlesnake.htm
The biggest on record being captured in Texas is 92.5 inches long (7'6"). I couldn't find an Oklahoma game-record (damn Dept. of Wildlife incompetance) resource.
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Well, I just grabbed the Stanley tape-measure on the table here and measured my thigh.
It's not exact, but my right thigh seems to be about 6" thick.
I can't believe a rattlesnake could be that thick, but then and again, others know better than I do about it.
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Well, I just grabbed the Stanley tape-measure on the table here and measured my thigh.
It's not exact, but my right thigh seems to be about 6" thick.
I can't believe a rattlesnake could be that thick, but then and again, others know better than I do about it.
Pie d x 6" = 18.84" sq inches....hmmmm....4" hogwire = 16" sq inches.
JohnnyReb goes for the tape.....FRANK NEEDS SOME SOUTHERN COOKING!!!!!!!
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When I was in recruit training at Parris Island in the spring of '86 I did see a rattlesnake that was 6 ft.
This was during the infantry phase of training when we were out in the boonies around the old airfield.
Quite an animated scene unfolded one day a short distance from my platoon in the pine woods where a group of drill instructors happened upon one of these treacherous serpents. One of them clubbed it with a big stick. After much prodding and poking, just to be sure it was really really dead I suppose, one of them picked it up by the end of the tail.
He held his hand up high over head and the head of the snake reached down the he ground. Not quite "as thick as a man's thigh" but plenty thick nonetheless.
Later we heard that it had been measured with a tape measure and it went a full 6 ft, 72 inches.
Here in the People's Republik of New York we do have timber rattlers, it is said. I have never seen one myself here. Mostly they turn up in the southern tier counties along the Pa. border. A bar in the town of Wayland has several skins of them varnished to boards on the wall, supposedly they are found frequently around there. Not really far from me here, half an hour away but much closer to Pa.
What we do have right around my area are Massassauga rattlesnakes, it is said. I have never seen one of those myself either. The Massassauga is purportedly the deadliest of all the rattlesnakes. They are not known for great size though, a big one being 36 inches. The Massassauga is protected so one had better not get caught with one displayed on the wall varnished to a board.
Massassauga rattlesnake.
(http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRblURSYfdPgdr8O3vTZKUddQcWfC-zEsmhhA5TAVEzGMSBQoXq)
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one thing about reptiles, they seem to be able to keep growing if the conditions (food/habitat) are right
i dont doubt her description. 9 feet is doable and 6" diameter is doable.
just think if he just ate a opossum. he'd be as thick a mans leg and for the most part immobile enough to get trampled.
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What we do have right around my area are Massassauga rattlesnakes, it is said. I have never seen one of those myself either. The Massassauga is purportedly the deadliest of all the rattlesnakes. They are not known for great size though, a big one being 36 inches. The Massassauga is protected so one had better not get caught with one displayed on the wall varnished to a board.
Massassauga rattlesnake.
(http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRblURSYfdPgdr8O3vTZKUddQcWfC-zEsmhhA5TAVEzGMSBQoXq)
Sounds like the NC pygmy rattler. They were put on the "protected" list. If he wants his ass protected, he had better stay with some government officials.
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Hmmm. I saw rattlesnakes while living in the Marie Sandoz country of NE. They were more like the prairie rattlers that are everywhere in the region. A 5' one is pretty long. I like to kill them and have killed dozens. You know, though, everyone that I killed looked much larger until it was really dead! I suppose what type lives there may have changed from the times of cattle drives.
The eastern timber rattlers that I've seen in the south central states were much larger. Longer and sometimes thicker.
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Pie d x 6" = 18.84" sq inches....hmmmm....4" hogwire = 16" sq inches.
JohnnyReb goes for the tape.....FRANK NEEDS SOME SOUTHERN COOKING!!!!!!!
Old age is hell....pie d is for circumference...pie are square is for area.
Pie r square (3x3)(3.14)=28.26 so Frank isn't about to skinny away afterall.
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Old age is hell....pie d is for circumference...pie are square is for area.
Pie r square (3x3)(3.14)=28.26 so Frank isn't about to skinny away after all.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
There ain't no way these thighs are 28+" in circumference.
I dunno what it is; the sewing stuff, including the cloth tape, are in a bedroom at the far end of the house--the unheated end, so I'm not motivated at the minute to go grab the tape and measure.
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I can believe the length of the rattlesnakes. If they don't have any predators, they'll continue to grow. I have yet to ever see one more than 4" in diameter, but I'm not all-knowing on this topic.
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Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
There ain't no way these thighs are 28+" in circumference.
I dunno what it is; the sewing stuff, including the cloth tape, are in a bedroom at the far end of the house--the unheated end, so I'm not motivated at the minute to go grab the tape and measure.
AREA FRANK, AREA....in other words a hogwire fence with about a (I am guessing) 5.4 inch square weave.
Stuffing a round rattlesnake thru a square hole here Frank.
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I got a feelin' them ol' cowhands were winding her up with a fish...err...snake story.
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AREA FRANK, AREA....in other words a hogwire fence with about a (I am guessing) 5.4 inch square weave.
Stuffing a round rattlesnake thru a square hole here Frank.
Oh.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crotalus_adamanteus
world record is 7.8 feet according to Guiness......
doc
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I got a feelin' them ol' cowhands were winding her up with a fish...err...snake story.
Well, here's the deal, though.
Mari Sandoz was obsessed with proving everything she wrote; after all, she was up against the eastern establishment elites in the publishing business who scorned her writings for twenty years, saying they were tall tales, they couldn't really have been.
This was a real chip on her shoulder--it obviously delayed her acceptance as a writer--and so she was scrupulous about making statements of fact.
(It helped that she was a clerk at the Nebraska State Historical Society at the time.)
Her fact-checking was awesome; hundreds of thousands of 3x5 notecards for a modest book. (They now repose in, of all places, the archives at the University of Syracuse in New York, even though she never had any connection with that institution.)
One reads Mari Sandoz, one is getting stark facts, no embellishments.
Add to that, that she herself was intimately acquainted with rattlesnakes, more intimately than she cared to be.
She used no quotation marks--"as thick as a man's thigh"--but rather just straightfowardly stated it was as thick as a man's thigh, as if she was acquainted first-hand with such a phenomenon.
I think Thor provided the answer--"with no natural predators"--which there probably weren't many in that area circa the late 1860s--"they'll continue to grow." That might be it.
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She used no quotation marks--"as thick as a man's thigh"--but rather just straightfowardly stated it was as thick as a man's thigh, as if she was acquainted first-hand with such a phenomenon.
Cowboys tend to be a little lean (skinny!). As I am personally acquainted with, anyway. :-)
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Well, here's the deal, though.
Mari Sandoz was obsessed with proving everything she wrote; after all, she was up against the eastern establishment elites in the publishing business who scorned her writings for twenty years, saying they were tall tales, they couldn't really have been.
This was a real chip on her shoulder--it obviously delayed her acceptance as a writer--and so she was scrupulous about making statements of fact.
(It helped that she was a clerk at the Nebraska State Historical Society at the time.)
Her fact-checking was awesome; hundreds of thousands of 3x5 notecards for a modest book. (They now repose in, of all places, the archives at the University of Syracuse in New York, even though she never had any connection with that institution.)
One reads Mari Sandoz, one is getting stark facts, no embellishments.
Add to that, that she herself was intimately acquainted with rattlesnakes, more intimately than she cared to be.
She used no quotation marks--"as thick as a man's thigh"--but rather just straightfowardly stated it was as thick as a man's thigh, as if she was acquainted first-hand with such a phenomenon.
I think Thor provided the answer--"with no natural predators"--which there probably weren't many in that area circa the late 1860s--"they'll continue to grow." That might be it.
That's what I would think. We've been killing rattlers for a long time, I doubt they get to stay around that long anymore. Also, as has been pointed out, if you've looked at pictures from back then, most people were WAY skinnier than now, so man's thigh wouldn't average as big.
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Here in the People's Republik of New York we do have timber rattlers, it is said.
Try Tongue Mountain near Lake George. There's YouTube videos of them up there. I've never really had the reason to go looking, myself.
When I was at the Village of Highland Falls' water reservoirs this past year, I was told that they have timber rattlesnakes and copperheads near the reservoirs, which are on the West Point reservation. When said village was making improvements to their reservoirs a few years ago, they had someone from the NYS DEC there every day checking the snakes, and someone from US FWS every other day.
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This is the small rattler we have in Western New York that exists in a few small isolated ranges~
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massassauga_rattlesnake
http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7154.html
Massasauga Rattlesnake populations in New York
(https://docs.google.com/viewer?pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgubk-T1eSbt4wzL3cDI0bdQed0vMSK_jztFSyVVd1VNSJNr8UNs--rdlP5l-1huuEvQVlL1xLwMkMcmCVfLGBV0Fiys_Raxu6OS4VMdZI1zkzJc_1COPquDEX3LNKEaPkHM-Q2&q=cache%3AR6wkP5-E-a0J%3Awww.brocku.ca%2Fmassasauga%2FJohnson%2520and%2520Breisch.pdf%20massasauga%20rattlesnake%20genesee%20county&docid=9fc2d919f142aa7608df29e4ec00ba7a&a=bi&pagenumber=2&w=800)
We also have the Timber Rattlesnake which can turn up anywhere along the Southern Tier, the Adirondacks and the Hudson Valley.
Timber Rattlesnake range
(http://www.dec.ny.gov/images/wildlife_images/fstirama.gif)
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I lived in FL for a while as a young child (I was about 7). But I seem to recall that the lady that lived next door (she was a veterinarian), shot a 12 foot eastern diamondback rattler.
My mom seems to recall it being 12 feet long as well.
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I lived in FL for a while as a young child (I was about 7). But I seem to recall that the lady that lived next door (she was a veterinarian), shot a 12 foot eastern diamondback rattler.
My mom seems to recall it being 12 feet long as well.
In some other thread here, in another forum, I wish to God I knew where, Rebel posted a photograph of what appears to be a rattlesnake--it's some huge snake with a diamond head--and so I can finally see where they could grow to be nine feet long (or longer), and as thick as a man's thigh.
I had never disputed "length;" I was always disputing "thickness," but again, Rebel's photograph resolved that issue.
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Compare the girth of this snake to the legs of the guy holding it.
http://www.wildlife-removal.com/images/Diamondback01.jpg
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Compare the girth of this snake to the legs of the guy holding it.
http://www.wildlife-removal.com/images/Diamondback03.jpg
Uh huh, but when reading the book, I had real "perceptual problems" imagining a rattlesnake as thick as the author alleged, and the matter was complicated by her well-known reputation for veracity and non-exaggeration.
I mean, hey, I even looked at my thigh (about 6" thick), and I couldn't imagine a rattlesnake that thick; perhaps boa constrictors, yes, but not ordinary rattlesnakes.
But Rebel's photograph showed me how such is credible.
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Uh huh, but when reading the book, I had real "perceptual problems" imagining a rattlesnake as thick as the author alleged, and the matter was complicated by her well-known reputation for veracity and non-exaggeration.
I mean, hey, I even looked at my thigh (about 6" thick), and I couldn't imagine a rattlesnake that thick; perhaps boa constrictors, yes, but not ordinary rattlesnakes.
But Rebel's photograph showed me how such is credible.
The snake in the pic I posted was probably about 6.5- 7 feet long.
Add 5 feet to that with a corresponding increase in girth.
That 12 footer I recall seeing as a kid was an absolute monster in girth.
Very few people believe me when I talk about a 12 foot eastern diamondback rattlesnake. I was very young, but my when my mom recalls it being 12 feet long as well....