FOLOW ME ON TWITTER FOR FOLKLORE UPDATES: @heatherfblanton // please send submissions to gowest36@gmail.com _____________________
At family gatherings, a number of stories are inevitably told. One of those is about the time my Aunt Delores was bitten by a copperhead. She was five or six years old at the time and was running around barefoot in the backyard. She says she remembers feeling something strike the bottom of her foot and went running into the kitchen crying. At first, my grandmother didn’t think anything serious had happened; she probably assumed my dad or other aunt was teasing their younger sister. But then my grandma saw the fang marks on the bottom of the foot and realized it was a snake bite. Delores says she vividly remembers my grandmother standing over her foot with a knife trying to decide whether to make a cut to get the poison out. Fortunately, my grandmother decided against it and took my aunt to the hospital. My dad and his other sister tell about their dad coming home and finding out about what happened and rushing to the hospital. In those days, the hospital was run by Catholic nuns and men were not allowed inside. But since my aunt was only five years old, my granddad pestered the nuns until they allowed him to stay. It was a good thing he was allowed to stay in the hospital, because there was a hurricane that night and he helped the nuns put up all the protective shutters. This is pretty much where the storytelling ceases, but my dad usually makes a joke about how after the snake incident, my aunt went around darting her tongue at people for several years.
Anna Langley