Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

This snake finds a superior foe in the deer and black snake. Whenever a buck discovers a rattlesnake in a situation which invites an attack, he loses no time in preparing for battle. He makes up within 10 or 12 feet of the snake, then leaps forward and aims to sever the body with his sharp and bifurcate hoofs. The first onset is commonly successful, if otherwise, the buck repeats the trial till he cuts the snake in two. The rapidity and fatality of his skillful manoeuvre leave but a slight chance for his victim either to escape or inject poison into his more alert antagonist.
The rattlesnake also finds a dreadful opponent in the black snake. Such is his celerity of motion, not only in cunning, but entwining itself around its victim, that the rattlesnake has no way of escaping from its fatal embrace. When the black and the rattlesnake are about to meet for battle, the former darts forward at the height of his speed, and strikes at the head of the latter with unerring certainty, leaving a foot or two of the upper part of the body at liberty. In an instant he encircles him in five or six folds; he then stops and looks the strangled and gasping foe in the face, to ascertain the effect produced upon his corseted body. If he shows signs of life, the coils are multiplied, and the screws are tightened-the operator all the while narrowly watching the countenance of the helpless victim. Thus the two remain thirty or forty minutes; the executor then slackens one coil, noticing, if so, the coil is resumed and retained, until the incarcerated is entirely lifeless. The moccasin is destroyed in the same way.