Extracted from The Past and Present of Shelby County, Iowa, Page 82-83, 1915. 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 finding 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. 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 (in Shelby County). 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 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 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 snakes were killed in the month of July, August, September, October, and one in the month of December. (end) Mona Sarratt Knight County Coordinator IAGenExchange - Pottawattamie County http://www.genexchange.org/county.cfm?state=ia&county=pottawattamie Providing free genealogy information to the world. Help keep genealogy free! Join the GenExchange http://www.genexchange.org/volunteering.cfm