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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (July 9, 1922)
PiigasincJectttm K V VOL. XLJ . . .,- PORTLAND, OREGON, SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 9, 1922 NO. 28 1 ane now 1 as me 6 7 ' - " ,.v, ; 3- .- San Diego Zoological So ciety Establishes Regular Sky Ambulance Service to Rush to Snake-Bite Victims Serum Obtained From Rattlesnakes Captured by a Pretty New York Girl. Xv X ' x Y JViss Gladys DUmars has played with snakes since she was a baby. : has used a live king snake as q bqndeaa r y . 05 v. Thirty rattlers and six copperheads were captured by Mrs. Ditmars and her two daughters on a Sunday morning trip into the Ramapo mountains. NEW YORK girl, a Brazilian scien tist and a California aviator have collaborated in saving southwest ern ranchers from the menace of death by rattlesnake bites. Under the direction of the San Diego, Cal., Zoological so tiety arrangements - have been, made, to. rush anti-toxin serum to the outlands in case of rattlesnake bite. The occurrence of several deaths in the back country be cause of snake bites led to the adoption' of these measures. , , , The serum which wjll be used comes, for the most part, from the Instituto Serum - Therapico at San Paulo, Brazil, presided over by Dr. Vital Brazil. And , this institution gets a great many of its snakes, from which is drawn the venom ter, Gladys, is America's foremost woman snake catcher. - Gladys is not the only member of th family who is expert at stalking the wary rattler or the elusive garter snake. When the Ditmars family goes out on a snake hunt, mother, father and both daughters carry forked sticks and sacks. But Gladys thus far holds the family record for num bers captured. When she is not laying fair hands to some strictly feminine enterprise she is .usually out after snakes in the wilds of Dutchess county, the Ramapo mountains or the Berkshire hills. ; - It is not unusual,; in fact, for Gladys to dance all Saturday night and then at break of day Sunday make a quick change fl.w ;ra MBKaB-se-u':. VK. f I 11 (III MlPIPP W. y :mm, 1 lllllm .... .. - x'iW : TTji R tMHWg-g5gJ mil ' "Mini, i ll 1 I 1 1l l 1 II H BiH.i H V 1 1 111 lilt BB1 iVULAl s . A close-up of Gladys Ditmars demoni strating how to hold a rattler. So i now you'll know the next. time, f i . .. y yt:., yy"y:-:i black snakes, mountain pilots and many others swarm out into the sunlight. ': ' The black snakes take to the brush heaps and form themselves in balls and) twists of a dozen or more. ' , The garters! crawl about' swiftly, looking . for early? mushrooms. The adders fancy swamp and streams. The mountain pilots, big large and' round and six to eight feet longj go crashing through the underbrush, fo frogs, small mammals, birds, snails liand) other prey. X . V" ' The rattler, however, is the first o ali the snakes to crawl into his winter Wnme at the approach of autumn, and is the,1ast to emerge in the spring. 'Each of this species comes .forth, slowly and crawls cautiously ,to the top of a rock, where be liesiand. suns .himself ' and , recovers his vitality When he feels he is completely 1 restored to strength he starts out' Jo roam. - . ,'y"'r '. -''i' The' Ditmars family knows the habfts of snakes perfectly. They know when fhe rattlers will be sunning themselveir-'aihd they are 'there to greet them On a recent Sunday morning hunt, in which the Ditmars family and several zoo attendants participated, 30 rattlers and half a dozen copperheads were captured. On this occasion Gladys spied a rattier from the machine, made a flying leap to the ground and , pinned the rattler down with her stick. As the forks closed over the snake, she reached . down swiftly, grasped the astonished reptile by the neck and thrust him squirming Jlntp a bag.. Closing the neck rof the bag? she moved over to another rock and repeated the operation. Miss Ditmars declares she does not al ways have to use the fork. In fact, she only uses it with the more active reptiles. Usually she stuns her quarry with a b?ow on the neck, then picks him up. On this occasion the Ditmars family, after getting whatever snakes were sun ning on the rocks, climbed up the precipices like mountain goats, in the effort to capture such as were dried and were off on the summer outing. Captures here were less frequent. Some of the snakes bagged that day were placed In the reptile house at the Bronx zoo. The others were dispatched to Brazil. Theodore Roosevelt in "Through the niif. 1 Skull of a pit viper, the South American bush master snake CLachesis Mat us). 2 The Ter -de- lance of South and Central America (Lanceolatus). 3 South American rattlesnake (Crotalus Adamanteus). Note the movable jaws, the few bones in the skull, with poison-holding glands at the sockets, and the incurved teeth ; . , , , , r s-- used in the production ot serum, from Dr.- into sport costume and lead her fam-' f A particularly favorable section for the Raymond, Ditmars, curator of reptiles at : ily en- an t expedition into the hilia in hunting of snakes is ona farm in Dutchess the Bronx zoo, New York, whose daugh- search of such snakes as may be found, county, several hours' ride from the Dit mars home at Scarsdale, N. Y. ? This sec tion is, very rocky and is filled with crev-; ices and underground runways especially favorable to the hibernation of snakes. In the bowls of the rocks are the en trances of the snakes' homes. But when the weather. gets warm they become exits.. Rattlers, copperheads, garter snakes, Brazilian of a visit the- serum Wilderness" (Scribner's), told to the Brazil institute, where is now manufactured. Describ- IConcluded cm lae 7.)