Crotalus durissus

It is very big, thick, like a beam perhaps ten cubits long. It has rattles, teeth, fangs. It is slick, smooth, slippery, smoky, dark like the tlilcoatl. The belly is smoky-yellow, the nose-tip ruddy. It is poisonous. There is no cure for it if it bites one; it is fatal. It lives in the hot lands. In very many places and often is it seen in Totonac country. It bites one, it strikes one; it completely envelops things, it swallows them whole. It awaits one on the road, it blocks the road to one. Wherever there is a single opening, there it stretches out—it stretches out blocking the road. It stretches out along it, or diagonally across it; it stretches out crossing the way so that none may pass, or so that there it may bite one. And if there is flight, if there is departure from its presence, it pursues one, it flies at one. But in order that it will not fly at one, in order that it will not destroy, he wraps up fine tobacco in paper; he throws it at [the serpent]. Or else he fills small jars [with fine tobacco] to throw the small jars at it so that the small jars suddenly burst, and the fine tobacco suddenly scatters. Thus [the serpent] stretches out enfeebled. Then he puts on the end of a stick a paper, a rag, well provided with fine tobacco; he inserts it in its mouth, so that it then does nothing more. He there captures it; he kills it. And it lies in water caverns, in crags, in canyons. There it lies eating, enjoying, swallowing, swallowing, whole the small animals.