FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: BITTEN BY A SNAKE

Jean Bell Mosley's new autobiography, "For Most of the Century," is only available in serialized form in the Southeast Missourian. Return each week for her continuing story.

One other incident during Loughboro school days will not be forgotten. It was again an October day. Long silken spiderwebs floated in the air. Falling leaves, woodsmoke, cricket song. Indian Summer.

Lou and I (by this time Lillian had gone on to high school) did not follow our usual path home from school but decided to take a short-cut which meant leaving the railroad tracks at the Big Bluffs, crossing the river on nature-placed rocks and proceeding up a densely forested mountain, on the other side of which we knew was home.

The way was only faintly marked by an old road where, in time past, someone had come to cut and haul firewood. Dry leaves were thick on the ground and, like all children, we loved kicking them up as we walked along.

Something sharp scratched my ankle. At first I thought it to be a sawbrier but as my foot went up, a long dangling thing went with it and there was blood on my stocking.

It was a copperhead snake and I had to shake my foot several times to get it loose, for its fangs had caught in my stocking.

"Cooperhead!" Lou shouted. Country children are well versed in the markings of snakes, especially the poisonous ones.

"Did it bite you?" Lou demanded.

"Yes," I replied, calmly, not knowing the danger. After all, I had been stung by wasps and hornets and such stings had hurt much worse than this bite.

Natural instincts are to get rid of your enemy, so I threw my books and lunch pail down on the snake. Lou had already pelted a few rocks at it and I soon joined in. Rocks are always plentiful in the Ozark hills.

The snake slithered away, apparently unharmed.

Gingerly, Lou went back after my books and pail and we started the rest of the journey home, which was about two more miles. Lou, to my bewilderment, cried all the way.

Mama was seen first, out in a garden patch. Lou cried out to her. Mama came running.

After that came such a flurry of community activity to "save my life" it made me feel very important.

The whole community could be summoned at once by one long ring on the party line telephone. One long ring was like a fire bell in the night.

Someone killed a chicken, split it open and put the warm body over my foot. Others brought wet clay and wet chewed tobacco poultices --anything that had drawing-out effect as it cooled. The one poultice we never understood was cockleburs boiled in sweet milk.

When word reached Uncle Ross McGee, from way up north (twenty-five miles), he brought a jug of home-made elderberry wine. Tourniquets were employed, even though it was late for them after the long walk. A knife slash was made across the wound, even though it was late for that too. Prayers were said.

Many years later I read that although poisonous, copperhead bites seldom killed anyone. This comment was made after serum for such bites had been discovered. My snake bite was pre-serum, and I had walked two miles after the bite, which gave the poison time to spread. Where the tourniquets were applied, great green blisters appeared. What caused them, nobody knew. My leg swelled to about the proportions of our kitchen range stove pipe and became about as black. Were the late tourniquets too tight, some of the poultices too pointless? Who knows?

I don't know why it was thought a "swig" of the elderberry wine would be helpful, but with a "swig" of that and other feverish effects from the poison, I became dreamily confused and thought for a while I was a little lamb on a tombstone which with which I was familiar.

This tombstone was in a little German graveyard we passed on our way to Doe Run.

The tombstone was near the roadway, very visible, and I was always fascinated by that little lying-down lamb atop the white marble. Fascinated and sad.

Many years later I went to examine the name on that stone, which still, at this writing, stands. Alas, there was none, or perhaps time and the elements had erased it. I put the one buried there in the same category as the one buried by the railroad track.

I lost about six weeks of school but Mama saw to it that I kept up to date with my school work, and if the classmates at school had moved up to mixed fractions when I was away, I had too.

Read the conclusion of Jean Bell Mosley's encounters with snakes Nov. 9.

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.