The rattlesnake, 'our dear neighbor'

A "modern-day St. Patrick" : Sister Mary Gerald Leahy, CSJ,
with facilities engineer Martin Bullinger in the early 1960s,
helps a visiting rattlesnake to find a safer location.

WE INTRODUCED SISTER MARY GERALD LEAHY the other day and described her impressive career as a biologist. Although insects were her specialty, disease-bearing mosquitoes in particular, she loved biology where she found it, and there was plenty at Chalon.

Take rattlesnakes, for instance. The Mount is planted right in the middle of snake country, surrounded on three sides by dense chaparral. And it's not as though the founders didn't know what they were getting into. Here is an excerpt from a history by one of them, Mother Dolorosa Mannix:

When the real estate agent took us to see the site, there was no road, and the climb had to be made through brush -- sage, mostly, chaparral and sumac. The guide sent his dog on ahead of us, saying, "If there is a rattlesnake in the brush, the dog will bark." We were grateful that the dog did not bark, though we did see rattlers coiled around the branches of the black walnut on the summit.*

That summit, of course, was where the College was built. In spite of 85 years of development in the area, there are still plenty of snakes roaming the hills.

As a biologist, Sister Mary Gerald knew that snakes play an important role in nature's cycles. Fewer snakes would mean more troublesome critters like rabbits nibbling on the landscaping and field mice in Brady Hall. Threatening as they seem, rattlers are good neighbors. When a snake paid a visit, Sr. Mary Gerald was summoned to greet him.

The picture above, found in her papers, shows Sister's technique for handling her reptilian visitor.  As she supervises, chief engineer Martin Bullinger has managed to get the rattlesnake -- which looks to be about 4 feet long -- to clamp his fangs into the end of a long stick. A big, empty glass jar stands ready.  Drop the snake into the jar, quickly pop on the lid, and carefully escort him off campus.

According to unwritten College lore, the only person ever bitten by a rattlesnake at Chalon was one of the Sisters, who was treated at a hospital and released with no ill effects. If it was Sister Mary Gerald, it's a good bet that she didn't mind. She certainly had enough exposure: The View from October 25, 1955, has a front-page picture of Sister handling a somewhat smaller snake by herself. In the caption, she is referred to as "a Modern-Day St. Patrick." 

We think the creature-loving St. Francis of Assisi may be a better comparison. No one will ever rid the Mount of snakes as St. Patrick did in Ireland, but Sister's legacy is at least to remember that they are God's creatures, or as a scientifically minded CSJ might say, our "dear neighbor." Next time you see our neighbor Mr. Snake, be nice -- and think of Sister Mary Gerald.

* Sister M. Dolorosa Mannix, Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles Provincialate Archives, 1927. Quoted in The History of Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles, California, 1925-1975 by Sister Mary Germaine McNeil, CSJ. New York: Vantage Press, 1985. Page 6.

Blossoms

SEEING THE MOUNT'S lush azaleas and camellias in springtime bloom reminds me of a story told by the late L.A. Times columnist and alumna Zan Thompson '40 about the grounds in the late 1930s when she was a student.

The campus was a bare hilltop when the Sisters took occupancy of the new college building in the spring of 1930. Landscaping got under way immediately, with redwoods and fruit trees and shrubs to stabilize the hillsides.

And flowers, of course. But the flowers had a particular purpose. Mother Marie de Lourdes Le May, head of the English Department and later president and Provincial superior, planted camellias, gardenias and roses near the front steps, blooms that would make a pretty corsage.

No Mount student, Zan wrote, would be without a corsage when her clueless blind date (usually a Loyola man) showed up without one. Mother Marie de Lourdes would take flowers and ribbon in hand and send her student off for an evening on the town with a classy corsage of home-grown posies. (P.S. -- The young lady had to be back in her dorm by 1 a.m.)

I don't know whether the flowering shrubs near Brady hall are the ones planted by Mother Marie de Lourdes, but it's nice to imagine that they are. Let the feminists take umbrage, but it's also fun to imagine a time when a young man on a date was expected to arrive with flowers.