The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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A SQUIRREL HAWK IN THE DEADLY FOLDS OF A COACHWHIP SNAKE
By S. C. Turnbo
A curious find in the woods was told me one day by Sam Pelham, son of Jim Pelham. When Mr. Pelham give me the account of it he was living near Lutie, Mo. He said that on a certain time while he was riding across Aaron Quick’s salt yard in the McVey Hollow where Mr. Quick salted his cattle he noticed something lying on the ground that he at first took to be a small quantity of salt that had been wasted. But on riding up nearer he thought it was a sack that someone had dropped, but when he rode up closer the object proved to be neither salt nor sack, but a squirrel hawk with a large coachwhip snake wrapped around the neck and body of the hawk. "I stopped and viewed the hawk and reptile with much curiosity. The snake had put in its work well for the hawk was almost dead. Its breathing was just perceptible. After looking at them a few minutes, I dismounted off of my horse and picked up a stick and unwrapped the snake from around the hawk and killed it and by the time the serpent was dead the hawk was reviving and I killed it with the same stick I killed the serpent with and hung them both up on a limb. In a day or two after this Aaron Quick in passing along by this ground seen them both hanging where I had put them."
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