Author: Ying Jian.
I heard the elders say that snakes and rats are natural enemies, and where there are mice, there must be snakes. This is true. In my family's former orchard, not only the molting of snakes is common, but it is milky white and translucent, like a hollow reel. And there was a thrilling man-snake battle in the old mansion back then. My mother wrote a short essay about this personal experience, which is attached here.
During the Qingming Festival, it rained a lot. It was an April day, and the drizzle had been dripping for nearly a week, and it was wet everywhere. One night in the middle of the night I was awakened by a noise in my sleep, thinking that I forgot to close the door at night and that a rat had run in. I sat up and turned on the light to look at the door, where it was half open and the broom behind it had fallen to the ground. Turning my head to the west window again, I saw that the hairs on my whole body stood up, and a large snake with a fiery red pattern more than one meter long was entrenched on the back of the chair and spat out red cores at me, so frightened that I quickly lay down and covered my head with a quilt. I was wrapped in the bed and screamed so hard that no one heard me, and it was unimaginable for a snake to crawl into bed. After a while, I secretly lifted the corner of the quilt and looked into the chair, and saw the snake burrowing its head into the pile of wool on the chair. I had just removed a pair of woolen pants before going to bed, and the snake might have been afraid to get its head into the wool. I took the opportunity to get out of bed barefoot and ran to my husband's room in the East Room to knock on the door, but my husband was deaf and didn't hear it, so I ran to my father-in-law's door and yelled. The father-in-law thought that a thief was coming, and hurriedly said: "Lujun! Don't be afraid! Abba is here! The door opened, and my father-in-law had an iron-tipped cane in his hand. I shouted that there was a snake, and my father-in-law followed me to the window and looked into the house on the flower platform, and the snake was still coiled in the chair, and its head was cocked again. At this time, the mother-in-law also got up and woke up her husband again, and the father-in-law changed a two-strand fork, and the husband a pickaxe, and the two men entered the room. The father-in-law gently picked the yarn with his fork, and the big snake jumped under the bed. The husband found a flashlight, and the big snake curled up in the corner of the bed and didn't move. The father-in-law reached in with a fork to fork the snake's head, and the husband took the opportunity to flatten the snake's head with a pickaxe. The next day, the neighbors knocked on the door early in the morning and asked my father-in-law, "What happened last night?" Why is your daughter-in-law so miserable? The father-in-law showed them the dead snake and measured it with a soft ruler, and it was one and a half meters long. My father-in-law said that this was a family snake, and every year I saw its molten skin in the backyard orchard, and somehow ran to the front yard.
When I went to work and told me about it, my colleague scared me and said that the snakes are all in pairs, and there should be one more at home. I don't sleep well, I usually sleep in separate beds with my husband, and at night I close the door tightly and plug in the window, and I don't feel at ease, so I let my husband accompany me. slept until midnight, and my husband suddenly screamed and rolled over and fell out of bed. I thought the snake was coming again, so I shivered and turned on the light, but there was no sign of the snake. The husband was still ignorant, saying that the long worm crawled into the bed just now and bit him on the lip. I figured it out, I have a Xi of sometimes holding my head in my hands when I sleep at night. Maybe his elbow touched his husband's face, and he thought he had been bitten by a snake and screamed. This shout was heard by the neighbors again, and the next morning someone came to ask about it, and everyone laughed when they learned of the situation, and a snake made my house make a fuss for two nights.
According to the color and shape of the dead snake, I opened the "Barefoot Doctor's Manual" at home and found it in the chapter on snakes with graphics. The book introduces: The red chain snake is a nocturnal post-fanged viper, but the bite symptoms are weak. It mainly inhabits fields, villages, and near houses, and is often found in the hospitalization of villagers. They mostly come out in the evening, and they are active after 10 p.m.
It's really a house snake.