Show 66 S nak inor I 1 za ata d 71 7 amt a X e S natural death comes to mar man who handled thousands of poisonous reptiles 11 RAH A WHOLESALE BUSINESS Ball was waa wont to declare that tho the nattle rattlesnake snake was much misunderstood unless molested it would not strike ordinarily sun antonio tex julius ea E ball tyone ono known to tile the world of tho the circus and museum as tile the rattlesnake tle tIc snake king hing la Is dead at the home of 11 his is daughter mrs emma braun in aa ann n antonio although lie he had handled literally hundreds of thousands of ana snakes ices in a long career ills his death was waa a in natural one Ball wn was s a native of germany but bu t came to texas when a young man and tit of first e engaged tn in farming fanning it was purely by accident that lie he started in the snake business s it Is said bald A medicine show was in efel oies h a small be settlement tt lement in buxar county and offered 2 for a rattlesnake Ball Bali never had caught a rattler rattier hilt but going out with a long stick at the end of which wits a forked prong lie ho soon found a largo snake pinned pemlea its head to the earth then picked it up lip threw it in a sack back and carried it to tile tho show manfrom that day forward Ball caught rattlers for a living and alid literally has hag caught single handed thousands of tho the reptiles tho rattlers are ara one of tile great natural crops of southwest texas becomes wholesale dealer As tile the Rattles rattlesnake nako king became better known find and ills his snakes were moro more in demand among circuses medicine shows and museums ho he became a wholesale dealer its as well as a retailer and mexicans in tile oly off season when farm work was slack frequently went snake catching when they made a catch they were certain to flud it a market with the snake king mr Ball was wont to C leclare declare that tile tho rattlesnake was much misunderstood der stood unless tile reptile was molested it would not strike ordinarily but would escape from tile the vicinity of threatened danger finger if a rattler Is startled it will strike and in tho the shedding bevis season on when n tho the reptile Is blind anything approaches at its peril tor for the snake lashes out at af every noise belonging to tile tho viper family tho the rattlers y young oung are b born orn not hatched as in the case of many other copt reptiles les and references to rattlesnake eggs sometimes seen are due to mistaking the eggs of some other snake for those of the deadly rattling viper or to nature faking the female gives birth s sometimes to litters of as many as a dozen vigorous little reptiles in ila the early spring and they emerge in into to tile the world fully equipped with poison sacs and fangs fange capable of slaying man mail or beast from th the 0 day of their birth on warns warna before striking the no rattlesnake Is a gentleman lie always gives due warning before lie he strikes mr Dall explained recently an in shedding season deaso n he cannot hunt because of hla his hunger and sightless sightlessness ness maka the rattler a mean cus customer tomer sometimes he will sound warning but generally not and lie ila will strike at tiny any noise during that PC period mr Ball was not afraid of rattlers and tile the larger they were and therefore the more dangerous the better ho he liked theo them for rattlers fiell bell by the pound ancy aadot not by length as the uninitiated I 1 n might imagine while many of the snakes to old by the snake king went want to the purchasers clia sers with their poison fangs intact tile the majority y had their fangs extracted before they were shipped |