nsimms wrote:
You never read about an ACW soldier getting snake bit, but that is bound to have happened with them running through woods and bushes. Can you imagine a skunk trapped between advancing lines at Shiloh or Antietam because dead or alive it was going to stink up the area and maybe change the direction of the charge.
Here's one for you (found at
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/head-tilting-history/civil-war-soldiers-encounters-with-nature):
Private Theodore F. Upson, 100th Indiana Infantry Volunteers, near Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 27, 1863
“I heard a racket yesterday and went to see what it was all about. I found that some of the boys had captured one of the big yellow rattle snakes that are found here and had built a pen of sticks at the foot of a white oak tree that had a limb sticking out over the pen and snake. When they had got it all fixed a man from the 8th Wisconsin came bringing the eagle they carry instead of a Regimental flag ... When he came the boys were betting on the result of the encounter between the eagle and the snake ... The man with the eagle (he is named Old Abe) was taking all bets that were offered saying the eagle will kill the snake ... Finaly the carrier gave Old Abe a little toss and he flew up on the limb where he sat turning his head first to one side and then the other, looking down at the angry rattler below. Then his keeper said, ‘Take him Abe.’ And before I could see how it was done he gave a scream, droped from the limb, and with one claw seized the rattler by [t]he head, and with the other on his body literaly tore his head off, then hopped up on the limb again. I would have lost my money sure. The rattler had no chance to bite.”
It seems snakes were not a primary concern of some:
Captain Charles B. Haydon, 2nd Michigan Infantry, near Vicksburg, Mississippi, on June 27, 1863
“The country is not so bad after all as I was at first led to believe. There are not so many snakes or other infernal machines as was represented. The alligators eat some soldiers [!] but if the soldiers would keep out of the river they would not be eaten.”
Still, I suppose they were lucky not to fight the war here in Australia. No alligators but plenty of crocodiles in the northern parts. Serpents abound.