QUITE POSSIBLY there will never again be a day in the life of Peninsula, Ohio, even remotely like Sunday, June 25, 1944. At least, most of the older citizens of that quiet little Ohio village hope such a day does not dawn again.
In the early morning, dairy farmers were getting the milking done. The housewives were in their kitchens fixing hot breakfast. Many of the men had forsaken church on this special day. Instead they dressed in their field clothes and headed to town.
There they joined a growing throng of men, boys, and hound-dogs milling around in front of the barber shop. A look at the group was enough to frighten any peace-loving citizen. The group appeared to be a posse preparing to hunt to earth a public enemy.
Their weapons ranged through handguns, shotguns, rifles, pitchforks, and corn knives. There was much yelling and general confusion. Finally the police chief, Art Huey, began to outline his plan.
All of the men spread out in a line. Then they would start tramping along the banks of the Cuyahoga River, being careful not to overlook ravines and gullies and such hiding places as log piles and old junked automobiles. Hopefully one of them would spot the critter and give the signal. Then everyone up and down the line would converge on the victim, and heaven only knows what might occur. By this time the object of their hunt had gained widespread fame. As they set forth they were trailed by assorted photographers and reporters representing newspapers from many parts of the world.
The story had started when Clarence Mitchell was working in a field beside the river. Mr. Mitchell often was followed to his fields by his dogs, but on this day the dogs seemed mighty nervous. They whined and whimpered. Finally they slipped off through the fields for home, leaving their master all alone.
Shortly after that Mr.Mitchell looked up from his work. There in plain view what he thought must have been the biggest snake in the world.
Mr. Mitchell stood rooted to the spot. The reptile, big around as a watermelon, was headed for the river.It stretched out across an incredible length.
Around that part of Ohio there are no truly big native snakes. The largest one Mr.Mitchell would likely see is the pilot blacksnake. One five or six feet long and big around as a banana would be big for its kind. But this creature crawling in front Mr. Mitchell was unbelievable. The snake was twenty-five feet long and might have weighed more than two hundred pounds.
Mr. Mitchell made no effort to stop the huge snake, or to engage it in combat. Understandably. "I watched," he reported simply. And while he watched, the huge snake slid down the riverbank and into the Cuyahoga. As it did so,Mr. Mitchell dropped his hoe and raced for home.
Subsequently, the snake was observed by a neighbor who was working in a field on the east side of the river. It came out of the stream and headed eastward. Both farmers repeated their stories of what they had seen. Many believed they had been out in the sun too long.
But around Peninsula the giant serpent continued to make its appearance. On one farm after the other it showed up. Those who did not see the reptile itself sometimes reported sighting the tracks.
Soon most people took the story seriously. Farm wives no longer let their children go into the fields to pick daisies. Man continuously glanced to all sides as they plowed their corn. Older boys, driving the cows in at milking time, ran them more than they usually did.
Meanwhile, in town, the great snake was about all anyone talked about. Increasingly, folks knew they would have to protect themselves somehow against this jungle menace that had invaded northern Ohio. Such a beast simply could not be permitted to slither around the woods and fields. The chief of police was worried that some of his neighbors, nervous because of the reports of the monster serpent, might shoot each other by mistake.
What kind of snake might this Peninsula giant have been? There are in the world six true giants among the snakes. All belong to the same family of reptiles, the Boidae. Even herpetologists who spend their lives studying the snakes of the world, have had trouble arriving at a decision about which of these is truly the largest. They agree, however, that it must be either the anaconda or the reticulate python is 33 feet from nose to tip of tail. But there is a believable record of an anaconda that measured 37.5 feet. This leaves anaconda, as Clifford H. Pope, an outstanding authority on the subject, has written "probably the giant among the giants."
The boa constrictor, a little one among the giants,may go to 18.5 feet. The boa constrictor, however, is the best known of the giant serpents. It is often kept in capacity. The home of the boa is Mexico and South America.
The anaconda is also a native of South America. There it stays much of the time in the warm water, moving slowly about the dense jungle streams.
The other four giants are all pythons native to the Old World. One often housed in zoos is the African rock python which can grow to more than thirty feet in length. This snake is sometimes seen in the grasslands, its head lifted above the level of the vegetation as it examines the countryside. It is native to most of southern Africa.
Across southern Asia the Indian python is frequently found in the jungles as well as the grasslands. It may grow to be twenty feet long. Meanwhile the reticulate python crawls through the Philippine Islands, Burma, and other parts of that humid tropical region. The other monstrous snake in the line-up is also a python, the amethystine python. Sometimes this beast, whose length may go to twenty feet, departs its haunts along the stream banks to come into the villages and farms. It is a native to Australia and some of the islands of the South Pacific.
All of these massive reptiles are non-poisonous. They have little need for poison. They can subdue prey by wrapping the haples dreature in masses of snake coils and hugging it to death.
Such snakes often lurk along trails used by wild hogs, antelope, and other animals. They choose what they like from the creatures that parade by. Or they may lie silently and deathly still along the limb of giant tree that branches out ever a jungle stream, ready to drop on their victims.
In ambush the giant snakes test the air for odors. They are also equipped with heat-sensitive organs which aid them in detecting the presence of warm-blooded creatures.
When hungry, the giant snakes grabs its victim first with its jaws, The teeth curve backward. The harder a victim pulls to escape, the more deeply it is impaled and the more securely it is held. Then the snack quickly brings coils of its massive body around the animal. The opportunities to escape at this point are slight.
Some believe these huge constrictors break a multitude of bones in their victims' bodies as they hold them. This is not the case. These big snakes do not squeeze their prey with great force. With their bulky coils wrapped about the struggling creature they just hold on. Each time the prey exhales, the snake takes up the slack, making it impossible for the victim to expand and draw in fresh supplies of oxygen. It soon suffocates.
Strangely, these reptiles are capable of eating animals even larger around than their own bodies. The jaws are flexible and loosely connected. They can adjust to the situation and spread around the large prey.
The swallowing process may be a slow one. Bit by bit, the reptile inches forward, stretching its own body over that of its victim. It pulls itself onto the prey somewhat as a person might force an elastic stocking onto his leg. The snake may enter an enclosure, capture, and consume a pig or calf, then find that it is too bulky to escape through the opening by which it entered.
How big an animal can a big snake swallow? There is one report from South Africa of a python 16 feet long swallowing and impala weighing 130 pounds. In South America an anaconda once consumed a five-foot cayman, an alligator-like reptile.
Meanwhile, one Indian python is credited with making a main course of an adult leopard. The snake is said to have suffered some scratches in the process. Serves him right.
On record also are authentic cases of reticulate pythons consuming people. Four Burmese hunters once went into the jungle in pursuit of game. Along the trail they became separated from each other. When they reassembled there were not four but three. This alarmed the remaining three. They straightway set forth searching for their missing friend.
First they found his sandals beside the trail. The sandals looked as if their owner had been lifted out of them. Soon the three men found a trail of broken vegetation. Then, resting in the shadows beside the trail, they found a python at least twenty feet long. Near its middle was slain upon the hunter had been found. Somewhat late.
It would, however, be unfair to the giant snakes to imply that they often seek humans for their prey. They have distinct preferences for other warm-blooded species. In fairness, it should be noted that people also eat pythons.
All of this, however, is lost on people who find they have a giant reptile in their neighborhood. Around Long Beach, California, some years ago, there was instant pandemonium when word spread that twenty-eight-feet-long python had escaped from a traveling carnival. The reptile was soon captured near the beach. That put an early end to the possibility of a scene such as the natives of Peninsula, Ohio, enacted at the time of their great snake hunt.
Every few days the snake would be seen again around the northern Ohio community. It would then slide into the brush and out of sight. By the time a posse could be organized and reach the site, the nervous hunters would find only mashed down grass, and more big tracks. This led to the big Sunday hunt in late June.
Nobody recalls for certain how many men and boys gathered to search for the serpent. The telephone operator was alerted to pass the word of anyone should call in a report of the monster. The local fire station was expected to sound three blasts of the siren on top the town hall.
The siren sounded about noon. Just about everyone who had not already gone out on the hunt now began to join in the case. They didn't know it then, but the caller had spread a false alarm.
They searched every ravine and kicked every brush pile. They locked into the branches of trees over the river. They poked into holes. But all day there was no sign of the Peninsula python. Everyone went home tired that night. No one had been shot. Police chief Art Huey let out a sigh of relief. Perhaps so did the Peninsula python.
Where did the monster reptile come from? How did it get free halfway around the world from its native land?? Folks in northern Ohio thought about that quite a bit. They recalled the day a carnival truck went out of control down by the cemetery. Everything that was inside it had spread over an acre or more. One of the things in it was believed to have been a giant python.
By autumn the python had vanished. Naturalists from Cleveland and from other cities speculated that it might have holed up for winter along the banks of the Cuyahoga and failed to survive the frigid northern Ohio weather.
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