The Last Horn Snake

by Bill (Ayyon) Michaels

At about this time of the year here in North Eastern Indiana when plants were exploding with growth, young raccoons and squirrels were being shown for the first time the world outside the nest, the butterflies were beginning to flit among the wildflowers and flowering weeds, and all manner of bees, flies, wasps, and insects were buzzing about in a celebration of life, my father killed a horn snake.

Now, everyone today knows that horn snakes don’t exist and never did. Just look it up in a book or on the internet. In 1924, however, when such knowledge was gained from the “old timers” living in the area, a few of the oldest remembering when the land was put up for “homesteading”, snakes with horns were widely believed in. If you were to ask one of these old settlers who had carved a farm out of virgin woods about poisonous snakes in the area, he would have listed “rattlers”, “moccasins” and “horn snakes”.

The belief in “horn snakes” was strong enough that the carnival folks in the 1930s would attach a spur from a rooster to a sliver of silver dime, insert it into a slit in a snakes skin, and charge to view it.

Dad was cultivating corn, a process by which a horse drawn machine with shovels steered by the operator’s feet was drawn down a row of corn digging out the weeds between the rows when he noticed the horses acting like they were concerned by the prospect of stepping on something. Dad carried a broomstick for the purpose of rescuing corn plants accidentally buried, and suspecting a snake went to investigate.

He claims that the snake came toward him, and that he killed it with the broomstick. (Broomsticks were much thicker then than they are now) He noticed that it had a horn on its forehead, and recognized it as a hornsnake, the first one he had seen. Having no idea of how rare they were (you can’t get much rarer than “nonexistent”!) he left it lay. Later, as more and more people scoffed at his story, he began to wish that he had saved it.

Chief among the scoffers was my “Uncle Earl” who had studied such things in college and repeatedly pointed out that only a “Pig headed Republican” would believe such a thing. During the Roosevelt administration, “Uncle Earl” got a job with the welfare department in the town where he lived, and was able to steal enough money to become rich and garner enough respect to be elected mayor of the town, so they no longer visited to beg food and ridicule Republicans.

As Dad described the snake, it was rather short and thick, black and dark gray with diamond patterns, and of course the horn resembling a chicken spur between and just back of its eyes.

I have thought a lot about this creature, and it would have been a good design for invading burrows of chipmunks and field mice. These small animals are quite plentiful, but are protected by tight fitting burrows, so it would be advantageous to incapacitate them with a shot of venom from the single horn and to pull them out by hooking them with the horn, or else with small teeth in the mouth.

I personally believe that one of the last specimens, if not the very last of a rare breed of reptile was killed on our farm that day.