Nature Notes with Richard Williamson
If you sleep in the long grass with your mouth open a snake will crawl down your throat. Also if you drink water from a brook, you will probably swallow adders' eggs and these will hatch out in your stomach.
There again, be careful not to show a piece of red cloth such as a handkerchief, to any snake because it will attack you.
These were some of the strange ideas country people held in Victorian days, collected by the writer Ric hard Jeffewries. Another involved adders drinking milk.
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Hide AdIn 1878 a dairyman at Corfe Castle noticed that something was skimming the top of the milk pails everyday so he set a gintrap expecting a rat. To his amazedment he caught an adder.
Not just one adder over the next few nights, but 17.
For full feature see West Sussex Gazette May 9