“While trying to net pigeons one season I saw a yellow racer crawling toward the stool pigeon. For the moment I was more concerned about a hawk that had been circling overhead for some time, and I didn’t pay much attention to the snake. At length the hawk dived at the stool pigeon and knocked the breath out of it. Without waiting for the hawk to snatch the stool pigeon the racer wound himself around the hawk’s neck and breast. Suddenly a hoopsnake rolled past me at top speed and brought up near the stool pigeon, as if he was going to help the racer strangle the hawk. The hawk arose before the hoopsnake got a chance to tackle it. It hadn't ascended more than two hundred feet when the racer tied its wings tight to its body, and the hawk dropped like a wad of mud, thirty feet or so from the stool pigeon. The hoopsnake had been glaring at the hawk as if he was disappointed, but the instant it landed he rolled right at it and commenced to thump it on the head with his horn. The hawk screamed and struggled violently, and the racer tightened his coils around its wings and prevented it from rising. It couldn’t fight with its claws, and the hoopsnake continued to hammer it on the head, and the racer to squeeze it, as if it had been a put-up job between the snakes beforehand to tackle the hawk in that way. The hoopsnake pounded until he had battered its head all out of shape with his sharp horn. In a little while the hawk ceased to stir, and the racer unwound himself, and the hoopsnake stopped hammering. Both reptiles gazed at the dead bird for a moment, and then the hoopsnake hooked his tail into his lip, and the two went away together.

“The opossum snake of Texas feigns death if you tap it on the back with a switch, and sometimes when you make a quick strike at it and don’t touch it. The natives assert that a badly scared opossum snake will remain quiescent until sunset, no matter how early in the day you scare it, and then it will glide off at great speed. I once frightened an opossum snake by switching the ground near it. The snake made believe it was lifeless, and I hid in a clump of bushes and watched it. It couldn't possibly have seen me, and for an hour and forty minutes it remained perfectly motionless. It lacked two hours and twenty minutes of sundown, but I had concluded to stay there and see whether the snake would clear out. I lost the chance, however, for within a few minutes a pair of turkey buzzards lit on the snake together. It began to squirm and flop and beat the grass, but it had waited a little too long, for the buzzards pulled it in two speedily, each sailing away with a writhing half.     “At another time I watched an opossum snake for hours, and was paid for it a little after sunset by seeing a monster owl pounce upon it, tie it into knots and sail off with it.” From— Freeland Tribune. (Freeland, Pa.), 06 May 1895. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.