HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
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were there many wild-cats of any kind. Occasionally a Canadian lynx was found. None of the water-courses bore indication of the presence of beaver at any time, but now and then an otter was taken. These animals were observed upon the river as late as in the '50s. Muskrats were very numerous, and their houses may still be occasionally seen along the water-courses. Minks, weasels and skunks seem appurtenant to civilization, and are about as numerous and about as destructive of domestic fowls now as they ever were. A large gray gopher and innumerable little striped gophers were found in the country, and are still here, each quite destructive of the newly planted grain. There were, and still are, plenty of chipmunks, also of fox-squirrels, and a few black and gray squirrels in the woods. Wood-chucks and house-rats and mice came with civilization, but moles and field-mice were here when the first settlers came. The soil had never been turned by the plow and their snug burrows thus destroyed, and the collective broods of all sorts, varieties and species of creeping, crawling, jumping creatures that find shelter on and under the surface of the earth, had multiplied and increased without measure, and incredible numbers of insects-some very beautiful and others exceedingly repulsive- swarmed on every side during the whole warm season.
Many varieties of small, innocuous snakes were found in great abundance-the common milk-snake, water-snake, striped (or "garter") and green snakes being most numerous. Scores of the mottled water-snakes could be seen on any quiet bright summer day about the log, brush and dirt dams at the saw-mills, sunning themselves in the warm light, and slipping quickly arid silently out of sight upon the approach of an intruder. There were at least a dozen varieties of harmless snakes that, in the early days, abounded in great numbers. The rattlesnakes, called by the Indians "Massasau-gas," were also very numerous. The children at play in the door-yard found them, and the men in the fields pitched them upon the loads in the bundles of grain and forkfuls of hay. They were a very poisonous reptile and, unless their bite were quickly attended to, it was liable to result seriously. To man, or to the faithful dog, it might prove fatal. Horses and cattle avoided it with terror; yet upon them its virus rarely, if ever, produced death. Hogs manifested no fear of it whatever, and sought it for food. The hog utterly indifferent to its strike, would greedily seize it with his teeth, put his front feet upon it, and tear it to pieces and devour it. A courageous dog would sometimes seize one near its head and shake its life out so quickly as to escape its fangs; but usually he received a venomous stroke that seemed to produce intense agony for several days, yet rarely proved fatal. The massasauga was a dull, slow-moving, stupid creature, apparently incapable of fear. It had but two quick movements. Its dull filmy eyes seemed nearly blind, and its motions purposeless and clumsy; but, upon the slightest disturbance, it slid into a coil-its head at the center and raised two or three inches above the ground-its rattle-equipped tail on the outer periphery of the coil, sounded its warning with a quivering movement so rapid as to be almost invisible. Upon near attack it struck with widely extended jaws in a quick strong action of the head, projecting its stroke about one-third the length of its body, and it was not rapid in recovering its position for another stroke. These reptiles were usually equipped with three to eight rattles, yet occasionally one was killed having fifteen or more "buttons",-even up to twenty. Each rattle or button was said to represent a year of life, and, as we never killed one having less than three, the young fellows must have kept closely concealed. It was held a religious duty to destroy every rattler that was discovered, and the duty has been so fully observed that they are now practically extinct. The resourcefulness of the children in the early times is illustrated by the story of the barefoot boy of ten years, who, while riding bareback on a big horse, discovered one of those venomous reptiles upon the prairie where there was neither a stick nor a stone, or clod of earth in sight. Yet he hears the rattle and must kill the snake. Without a moment's hesitation he slides from the horse's back, pulls off the bridle, and, holding the animal with one hand by the "foretop," he swings the bridle and brings the iron bit with crushing force upon the reptile, again and again, until it is dead. Some of the boys would handle the striped and the little green snakes as pets, carrying them in their pockets. They were really as harmless as grasshoppers. Many tales were told in the pioneer times of "vipers," "adders," "Moccasins," and "blow snakes," as venomous reptiles
