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Show 255. Muir too was troubled by an appropriate attitude toward rattlesnakes. In 1869, an almost comic episode is recorded in the journal: Killed a rattlesnake that was tranquilly sunning himself in coiled ease about a bunch of grass. After dislodging him by throwing dirt, I killed him by jumping upon him, because no stones or sticks were near. He defended himself bravely, and I ought to have been bitten. He was innocent and deserved life. Clearly, Muir wasn't easily charmed by the viper, though he took a "live and let live" attitude in later years, even writing about a rattlesnake with a "bashful look in his eye." He finally decided to kill snakes only in self-defense, and found that was never necessary, since the rattlesnakes were eager to get out of the way of men. Late in life he said, "I would rather brave Gila monsters, and rattlers, and wild Indians, and tarantulas than life in the city." Others found Muir's sympathetic view of snakes and other crawlies to be quaint. Gifford Pinchot noted, "when we came across a tarantula he wouldn't let me kill it. He said it had as much right there as we did." If Pinchot had truly understood what Muir was saying, the history of conservation in America might have been different. A major work on the history of National Parks in America uses an anecdote to show the character of Secretary of Interior Albert Fall, proving his stuff as a real westerner. In Yosemite, Fall drew his six-shooter and killed a rattlesnake from horseback. |