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Milo Phillips, Shady Spring farmer, entertained yesterday’s circuit court jury with rattlesnakes.Phillips was reared over on Big Beaver creek, where rattlers outnumbered- residents— before the snakes died “striking” at foreat fires.“One evening when T was a boy,” laughed Phillips to a recessed jury, “I met Uncle Billie Halstead from up on Bowyer. “He was uncle Frank Halstead (district forester) and father of Henry Halstead, whose presence on the street below the jury room prompted Phillips to speak of snakes.Uncle Billie met Milo Phillips at a “leaning” chestnut.” “He walked with a long cane, and pulled himself along this way,” mused Phillips, demonstrating in the center of the )ury room.“ ‘Milo,” he says, 'I’ve just killed a rattler back yonder that was half as long again as my cane and as big around as my thigh.”’“Well,” continuel juror Phillips, “I neverthought much about it until a good bit later. 1 was a passing that leanin’ chestnut where Uncle Billie said he killed that big rattler. There,down In a depression-like, I saw- a pile of bones that looked like shoates’ bones. But ‘twasn’t; it was that snake Uncle Billie killedJust then the jjury room door opened and court Bailiff Leonard Collins yelled, ‘‘All right,gentlemen, let’s go.”And rattlesnakes quickly gave way to lessinteresting evidence.0During subsequent recesses Phillips established the fact, to the jury's satisfaction, thatrattlesnakes are no cowards. They’ll not run, even from death. Other jurors nodded concurrence.“They’ll just stand and strike’ at forest’* • * X .... i V.fires,” said the Shady Spring native,” and burnto death. That’s what’s done away with snakea in this country.”
Newspaper Details
Beckley Raleigh Register
Beckley, West Virginia, US
Tue, Dec 17, 1940
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
OH, USA 21 Aug 2022
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