They say that previously in the West, rattlesnakes were visible and invisible; they rolled over the land like waves on the sea. And as if the cowboys had to put the cattle on stilts so that the snake would not bite them. And yet, as the case of Leander shows, there were snakes that were friendly. Take, for example, the case of a prospector who went looking for gold back in 1848. I think his name was Old Pike. So, the owner of the mine hired him and his partner to his mine and told them to go down deeper to see if there was any gold there.
While on the way to the mine, Old Pike inadvertently put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a very cute little mouse. And since he generally loved animals, he decided to tame it and take it with him to the mine, for fun.
Having gone down into the mine, fellow prospectors discovered an ingenious lifting device that made it possible to lower and raise a rope using a rod and a handle. Old Pike was naturally skinny and gaunt and decided to be the first to test the lift. He tied a rope to his belt and told his partner to lower him deeper.
He was safely down to a depth of thirty feet, when suddenly the rope broke, and Old Pike flew down like a sinker and slammed to the bottom. The partner who remained at the top looked into the depths, did not see or hear anything, but decided that Pike had killed himself to death, and gave in.
However, Old Pike soon came to his senses and wondered: how to get out of this mine? There was no point in climbing up the steep wall, and the end of the broken rope was too far from him. To console himself, Pike pulled a mouse out of his pocket. Thank God, he was not hurt at all from the fall, only his mustache turned gray - probably from fear.
Old Pike put the mouse back in his pocket and then suddenly noticed something falling from above, sliding along the wall and lying motionless at his feet. It turned out to be a huge rattlesnake, seven feet long, no less. She apparently lost consciousness from the fall. Old Pike quickly stepped on her with his foot and pressed her head to the ground. He could have easily dealt with the snake, but by nature he loved animals and therefore lost his leg, but not completely.
Finally the snake opened its eyes and began to squirm, wanting to get free, and Old Pike began to admonish it, saying that he was not going to do anything bad to it. The snake stopped writhing, but looked at Pike with fear and distrust. Then Pike remembered the mouse. He knew that snakes loved mice very much, and although it was painful and unpleasant for him, he decided to sacrifice the mouse in order to appease the snake.
He simply did not see any other way out.
The snake instantly swallowed the mouse and looked at Pike with gratitude. And in general she tried to show such kindness that Pike risked removing his foot from her head. And then he spoke to her; He generally loved talking to animals and assured that they understood him. He complained to her about his plight. The snake blinked and seemed to think. But she immediately began to act. She climbed into Old Pike’s arms and curled up there. And then she began to swing her head, and Pike realized that she was swinging in order to make a jump to the top edge of the shaft. The depth of the shaft was considerable, even for such a long seven-foot snake as this one, but the game was worth the candle.
Swinging, the snake tensed with all its muscles, made a sign to Pike, he threw it up, and it soared upward. The snake jumped to the cross of the lift and stretched out its neck - in fact, every snake consists of half the neck, and then there is a tail. So, she craned her neck and sank her teeth into the crosspiece. Hanging by her teeth, she gradually pulled herself up and immediately disappeared from sight.
And Old Pike sat downstairs and waited to see what would happen next. To tell the truth, he was a little discouraged. It turns out that he lost his pet mouse, and received nothing from the snake - neither thank you, nor goodbye. He was left completely alone at the bottom of a deep shaft without any hope of salvation.
Several hours passed, dusk deepened, it was so dense that Old Pike decided to make a soft bed out of it to sleep. But hunger did not let him sleep, he had to take out a knife and cut off the toe of his shoe in order to chew it and feed himself a little. And just at this time, pebbles fell noisily into the shaft from above. Old Pike looked up. Something was slowly descending.
Pike screamed with joy, thinking it was his friend who had returned to save him. But he immediately lost heart. It was his friend, but not his partner, but a rattlesnake, and not alone, but with his own kind. Holding each other by the tail, they pulled out into a long rope that reached to the very bottom of the shaft. The topmost snake coiled itself around the post, as if caught on an anchor. Pike's heart sank with excitement when it finally dawned on him why the rattlesnake and its rescue team had returned here.
The snake shook its head at Pike, he grabbed the slippery scaly rope and, grabbing it with his hands, climbed up. He was simply happy, he would have hugged all his saviors in turn.
Before he had even reached the middle of the shaft, he suddenly heard someone squeaking in his pocket. That's it! Yes, this is his mouse with a gray mustache! It turns out that the rattlesnake, out of friendly feelings, sneezed out the mouse whole and unharmed, except that it was a little sweaty behind its ears.
When Old Pike was last seen, the pet mouse was still with him, hidden in his pocket. After all, he was by nature a great lover of animals; he would not have harmed a fly if it had not inadvertently fallen under the firecracker with which he fanned himself in hot weather. As for rattlesnakes, Old Pike considered them man's best friend.
The majority may not agree with this, but the majority did not fall to the bottom of a deep mine. And then maybe rattlesnakes these days aren't the same as they were a hundred years ago, although just last week they told a story about a snake that learned to play the guitar. True, don’t believe everything you hear.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru