Snake Hunter
libre 26
The snake hunter in this story is a cat.
How the cat ended up at the gamekeeper's place
One spring day, on an inclement, dark night, a car loaded with household goods stopped near the gamekeeper 's cordon in the Kokpek gorge. A cat was tied to a table leg like a dog with a short rope around its neck. People came to the fire to ask the gamekeeper about the road. He told them in detail and went out to see them off.
The car moved heavily along the highway, and where it had recently stood, the huntsman noticed some moving dark lump. He illuminated it with the beam of a flashlight. It was a cat with a piece of broken string around its neck. He promptly disappeared under the porch.
The cat and the rabbit meet
On the very first day of the cat's appearance on the cordon, an unpleasant thing happened to him. He had probably never seen a rabbit before. The cat ' s acquaintance with the rabbit began when a large rabbit waddled past the porch in the morning. The cat was basking in the sun on the top step, squinting his eyes and tucking his paws under him.
His sleepy mood was immediately replaced by eager attention. Eyes wide open, the cat jumped off the porch and crawled on the ground.
At this time the rabbit was sitting quietly with her tail against the porch, eating some root dug up by her front paws. She noticed the cat, but did not change her posture, but only stopped chewing, turned her head slightly and squinted back with one eye. The cat crawled closer and closer and finally froze, keeping his eyes on the rabbit's white tail. She didn't move. Neither did the cat.
And so it went on for some time. Suddenly with a lightning leap the cat rushed forward with outstretched paws! But at the same instant the rabbit kicked with her hind paws straight into the cat's "face". The blow was so strong that the cat flipped in the air and flew back to the porch.
After that, the cat no longer looked for fights with the rabbit. As soon as the rabbit appeared near the porch, the cat opened his eyes wide like two lanterns and watched the animal closely, turning his head until he was far away.
A cat in the prime of life
The cat was not a pampered pamper who was used to warmth and affection, but a courageous cat in the prime of life. He lived on the street under the porch and did not ask to come inside even during heavy spring frosts at night. The cat was never fed because it was useless. The cat sniffed suspiciously at the milk, raised his tail and stepped aside, shaking one foot and the other as if he had just stepped in a puddle.
He caught mice for himself and differed from wild cats only by the fact that he lived under the porch. What adventures he had during his nocturnal treks for prey! Once he crawled to the porch in the morning, covered in blood and wounds. He'd been attacked in the night by an owl. No one saw what happened there.
The cat had been ill for over a month, and for the first time he was fed by the gamekeeper's children. Youth and hardiness won out. The cat recovered and again switched to self-supply, refusing from cooked food.
Once at dusk the cat was shot by a hunter, mistaking it for a hare. But he recovered even faster from the shotgun wounds than from the claws of the owl. What a cat without a name it was!
Shieldbill snake
The reddish-gray rocks of the gorge overhung the very cordon of the gamekeeper. Ephedra bushes, tavolga and stiff grasses ran along the bottom of the gorge. In summer, the rocks were heated by the sun and slowly cooled down only in the morning. It would be hard to find another gorge in the mountains more attractive to snakes.
Grey or reddish snakes Shchitomordniki, under the color of the rocks, always suddenly raised their triangular heads, making people hurriedly bounce aside, These snakes are very poisonous. Shitomordniki more than once crawled up to the cordon itself and bit the gamekeeper's children for their bare feet.
The next day it was terrible to look at the child: he swelled up, the pupils of his eyes dilated, and blindness began. Only after a week the child recovered. Children could safely play near the house only in the fall, after frost, when snakes were hibernating.
Summer has long since come, but, strangely enough, there were no snakes near the cordon this year, although there were many of them around in the cities, as usual.
A cat hunts snakes
One day, a cat was seen doing an amazing thing: he was eating a snake, starting with the tail! After that, he was seen several times dragging a lifeless, rope-like, shieldbearer into the bushes. Once he cautiously crept past the porch of the cordon completely silent as a gray shadow, his eyes burning.
Out of the low grass toward the cat, hissing, the head of the shieldbearer rose at right angles from the ground. The snake watched every movement of the cat. And he crawled slower and slower and finally froze not far from the snake. Only the very tip of the cat's tail moved nervously to the right and left. Everyone watched the scene from the porch with interest. The huntsman's wife was the first one who couldn't stand it and grabbed the shovel.
- She will sting the cat!
The gamekeeper began to dissuade her. This is important for science. After all, no one has ever seen a case of fighting cats with snakes!
- I need your science, I feel sorry for the cat! -
said the wife and started to come down from the porch. But at that time something strange happened. The cat rushed forward, jumped high up, and the snake ran in place, curled up in a ball. And then the cat grabbed it by the neck with his teeth and calmly took it away into the bushes. A large snake dragged on the ground between the legs of the cat, he spread them wide to avoid stepping on them.
The mystery was unsolved. Everyone only saw the cat lunge at the snake, and that was all. An argument at the wrong time prevented an interesting observation from being made.
The danger had passed
A few days later the hot weather arrived, and the gamekeeper's wife arranged the cradle with the infant in the shade of the porch. The boy slept with a pacifier in his mouth and his baby sister drove away flies while everyone ate breakfast in the hay. Suddenly the girl's desperate cry caused the adults to run outside. She was pointing upward with her hand. On the ledge of the wall above the cradle crawled a large midge.
Everyone was confused, not knowing what to do. The snake was barely held on the narrow ledge of the wall ledge and at any moment could break off and fall directly on the child's face. The mother rushed to the cradle to grab the child, but the snake was frightened, crawled faster and almost broke off. The frightened mother was grabbed by the hands - the cradle could not be approached!
Breathless all followed the shield muzzle, and he slowly crawled along the ledge, stopped, sticking out a bifurcated tongue, and again crawled. At last it safely passed the cradle, but suddenly it snapped and fell to the ground, the danger was over.
A snake hunter defeats a shieldbearer
Before people knew it, a snake hunter - a cat - flashed from under the porch and rushed at the shieldbearer. The fight with the snake was lightning fast. With a quick blow of a clawed paw, the cat slapped the snake on the head on the right, and the other paw immediately struck on the left. The snake twisted and curled up in a ball, hissing weakly.
The cat grabbed the snake by the neck and dragged it into the bushes. We took away the cat's shieldbearer with faint signs of life. The three lacerations began with three wide cuts from the back of the head to the nose, ending narrowly - like three exclamation points without dots. The same deep claw wounds were on the snake's head on the left side. The cat's slaps were so instantaneous that the snake didn't have time to bite.
If it was not killed immediately, it was turned to shock and neutralized. A gamekeeper of Issyk cordon also told that they had a cat that easily disposed of snakes with slaps of its front paws. How little we know about the habits of animals, even those that have lived near humans for thousands of years!
