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Molding snakes

When you get them for molding, if it is possible, do not remove their teeth if you [think you might] want to keep them, because having had their teeth removed, it hurts their gums and mouths, and they can no longer eat. You can keep [the snakes] in a barrel full of bran or even better of earth, in a cool place, or in a glass bottle. And give them some live frog or other live animal because they do not eat anything that is dead. Also I have noticed that<div class="folio" align="center">- - - - - 109v - - - - - </div> when they want to bite or to eat something, they [snakes] do not go at it head on, but sideways and by sinuous coiling, as do Satan and his henchmen. The snake has a small head, but a very large body; the entryway to sin seems small and inconsequential, but the consequences are great indeed. A snake can abstain from eating for seven or eight days, once he has swallowed a frog, and can swallow three or four frogs, one after the other, and what it has devoured does not rot and is not digested all at once in its stomach, but each part little by little, i.e. the bones and everything. The rest is just as fresh as when the snake ate it, such that when one bothers and torments it, it spits out what it swallowed up, which, in part, is totally digested, with the other part as fresh as if the frog were alive. It can hold a swallowed frog down for two or three hours and spit it out alive.