THE HOOP SNAKE

The Hoop Snake is a well-established menace, attested to by countless trustworthy reports from across the woods, and its peculiar habit of clamping its tail in its jaws and rolling at astonishing speed after prey—or imagined foes—has no equal in the animal kingdom. Its tail ends in a venomous stinger so potent that a mere trace of 0.003 parts per million can kill even the tough-skinned Hodag within an hour, which explains why seasoned woodsmen give this rolling engine of destruction a wide berth. When hooped, a mature specimen measures nearly 1.6 feet across and has been timed at over a thousand revolutions per minute, reaching a straightaway speed of about sixty miles an hour—easily faster than a jackrabbit, though the snake must uncoil to pass through a fence, which is the only hope for escape. The deadliness of its venom is beyond dispute; in one fit of anger, a Hoop Snake stung one of Paul Bunyan’s peavy handles, swelling the wood so greatly that Paul had to split it into 946 cords, only to find it would not burn but lay in the stove hissing like the serpent itself.