Chapter 30 The fourth section goes deep into the hinterland of snake hunting

I took the train first, then the car, and then the three-wheeled motorcycle that runs on the country roads. The compartment has a roof and people can sit on it.In the north, this kind of cart for soliciting passengers is called a three-wheeled bungee cart, or a donkey cart; I have forgotten what it is called here. There were seven or eight people sitting densely in the tricycle compartment, and two young men grabbed the iron frame on the ceiling and stepped on the horizontal bars outside the compartment.This rickety tricycle drove to the ancient village, and I was deeply amazed by the beautiful scenery on both sides of the road.To my left is a man in his fifties, wrinkled like walnut skin.When he smiled, the wrinkles spread to the upper part of his face, like an emergency assembly, and he saw everyone smiling humbly, as if everyone was his creditor.His looks and expression made me sad.On my right is a teenager, wearing a blue school uniform and carrying a schoolbag, taciturn and full of thoughts along the way, as if he played truant.

The tricycle circled along the rugged path, and sometimes it was about to roll over, and my heart was in my throat, but it bumped for a while, and then galloped on the flat ground.Occasionally, local mountain people will appear on the side of the road. When the tricycle passes by, they will give way to the side of the road and greet the people in the carriage.Their sharp teeth stood out against their dark faces.Sitting in the car, I was dizzy and felt like I wanted to vomit. I was about to call the driver to stop when I suddenly looked down and saw a foot-long snake climbed onto my sneakers and crawled along the thick jeans. On the knee.I was so shocked that my breathing stopped suddenly and I dared not move my legs.This snake is emerald green and has a pointed head. It spits out snake letters and swims left and right.I thought about how thanks to my sneakers and jeans, the snake didn't feel my body heat the day I let it crawl through.The snake continued to crawl forward, in that twisted and terrifying posture.It is said that all snakes are short-sighted, and their senses are all on the snake letter, and they can judge the obstacles ahead by relying on the snake letter.The snake crawled over my knee and onto the student.The student has not realized that the danger has come, he still looks at the scenery outside the carriage with the sad eyes of a teenager.When I was at a loss, the man in his 50s on the left suddenly stretched out his hand, grabbed the snake's head like lightning, and took the little snake off the boy's body.

I just rejoiced that a disaster was over, when suddenly the man's face turned pale, with large drops of sweat appearing on his forehead, his face was full of horror and fear, and drops of blood flowed from his fingers.Just now, he was eager to save people, and pinched the little snake's head. Because of too much force, he squeezed through the poisonous snake's jaw, and the fangs pierced his fingers. The people in the car jumped out of the car one after another, looking at the man in horror.The man sat slumped in the carriage, his face ashen.Later I found out that this little snake was Zhuyeqing.

Zhuyeqing was already dead, paralyzed in the carriage like a piece of rope.A young man picked out the green bamboo leaves with a stick and trampled them to pieces to vent his anger. Why is there bamboo leaf green in the carriage?What should the injured man do? The tricycle driver only pulled the injured man and ran forward chug-chug all the way.It was bumping on the rocky mountain road, like a panicked praying mantis.The rest of the people walked forward along the mountain road, panting, worrying about the fate of the injured man. After walking for more than half an hour, we saw a village with only a few families on the side of the road.The tricycle was parked on the side of the road, the engine had been turned off long ago, and the driver was sitting at the door of a house smoking.The injured man was lying on the bed, still panting heavily in shock.His fingers are covered in black herbs and wrapped in calico.

The male owner of this family is smoking a bamboo hookah, the chimney is as thick as a gun barrel, and his face is prematurely aging.Seeing so many people suddenly coming, he hastily brought out bamboo stools from the room to give up their seats for everyone.I asked the injured man how he was doing now, and the man said that he couldn't die, but the arm was probably disabled. I asked, "Why didn't you send it to the hospital as soon as possible?" The driver interjected that it was a 4-hour drive from the nearest town, and people would die before the car arrived. Later, I learned that almost every village here has a doctor who treats snake venom.They use traditional Chinese herbal medicine that has been passed down for thousands of years, while the hospital at the foot of the mountain uses Western medicine methods, and the treatment methods are different.The locals call the doctors in the village local doctors, and the doctors in the hospital foreign doctors.

There are many kinds of poisonous snakes in Wuling Mountains, and there are also many kinds of Chinese herbal medicines that can cure snake venom. Herbal medicines that can cure the bites of five-paced snakes cannot cure the bites of Zhuyeqing; those that can cure Zhuyeqing cannot cure cobras.Some people go into the mountains to catch snakes, but they don’t bring all the Chinese herbal medicines with them. If they are bitten by some kind of venomous snakes, but they don’t have such healing herbs on their bodies, they can only cut off their wrists and cut off the bitten parts with a knife. , to prevent toxins from invading.

The male owner of that house asked the driver: "Why is there a snake in the car?" The driver didn't say a word, puzzled, yes, how could there be a snake on the tricycle?But no one can tell.Maybe the snake on the side of the road sneaked into the car before the passengers got on the bus; maybe the snake hid in someone's luggage and was brought in. Here, if one is bitten by a poisonous snake and cannot find a town or village within the available time, one can only die; If the native doctor is not at home, he can only die; if he finds the native doctor, but there is no Chinese herbal medicine at home that can cure the snake venom, he can only die.Standing on the small road in the mountains, I suddenly felt a crisis, my eyes kept looking at the grass on the side of the road, and whenever there was a turbulence, I felt shuddering and terrified.

The mountains in Wuling Mountains are continuous and layer upon layer, and people live in the folds of the mountains, almost all of which are villages composed of several families.To walk from this village to that village, one or several mountain peaks must be crossed.Fortunately, the mountains here are not high, almost all below 1000 meters above sea level.I have been to countless mountain villages, and I feel that these mountain villages all have a common phenomenon, that is, all villages are built in valleys.This is to keep out the wind and rain, and to store accumulated water. It is said that there are also reasons for Feng Shui. The Feng Shui of valleys is better than that of ridges and peaks.

After the three-wheeled motorcycle stopped at Doctor Tu’s village, it could no longer move forward. After that, the road into the mountain became very narrow, and there was only a winding path like a dead snake, lying cold in the grass.The number of people entering the mountain is constantly decreasing. Whenever there is a fork in the road, some people will take the fork in the road.In the end, it was just me and a well built guy in his 20s on the road. The young man lives in the same village as Lao Gu. After graduating from junior high school, he has been working in the county and rarely returns home once a year.This time I came back with a big bulging woven bag, which contained various daily necessities from washing powder to toilet paper.I asked, is there anyone in the village who catches snakes?He said that the only person he knew was Lao Gu.I asked him why he didn't catch snakes, but chose to work?He said that it is difficult to find poisonous snakes now, but when he was a child, poisonous snakes could be seen everywhere, and as long as he entered the mountain, he could see five-paced snakes.

He said he has an inexplicable fear of snakes. When he was still in elementary school, one year in late autumn, he slept in the house while his parents went out to do farm work.After waking up, he felt something icy in the quilt, touching him, making him very uncomfortable, so he reached in and touched a coiled poisonous snake.The body temperature of venomous snakes is several degrees lower than that of humans, so people call venomous snakes "cold-blooded animals".At that time, it was the turn of autumn and winter, and it was the eve of the hibernation of poisonous snakes. The poisonous snakes that are afraid of the cold would often sneak into the rooms where humans lived, or even quilts to keep warm.

He didn't know when and how long the poisonous snake got in.He was terrified and didn't know what to do.He had seen poisonous snakes countless times before, but he had never been so close as today.He wanted to call his parents, but on second thought, his parents were not at home, and even if they were, he would be helpless in the face of this situation. Children in the mountains have been bold since they were young. They grew up amidst the cries of tigers, leopards and wolves.He knew that when you encounter a snake, you must not panic, you must be calm and not move around, because you will never outrun the snake.A snake can run faster than a car at full throttle.If you want to run away, run in an S-shape. Snakes have poor eyesight and rely on temperature to judge the location of their prey. If you run in an S-shape, the snake cannot judge your exact location; however, this is a last resort. The poisonous snake lay lazily in his arms, as quiet as a pile of cotton wool.He couldn't tell if the poisonous snake was asleep, and he wanted to get up secretly, but he didn't dare.Later, as the sun gradually slanted to the west, the mooing of the cattle returning to the village sounded outside the door, and the hen flew over the courtyard wall, clucking and flying up the tree branch.He suddenly thought, will these calls wake up the poisonous snake?If the poisonous snake wakes up, will it attack him? He decided to leave secretly. He slowly lifted the quilt.In the light of the evening sky, he saw the colorful coiled poisonous snake, its head resting on its body, motionless.He threw the quilt aside and was about to get up when the poisonous snake suddenly woke up.It raised its head high and looked at him with unusually cold eyes, the snake's head was only a foot away from his face.He had never seen a poisonous snake so close before. The poisonous snake's head was flat and triangular, and it kept spitting out bright red snake letters. He could clearly see the fork in front of the snake letter. He whimpered, terrified, and forgot his father's previous warning about seeing a poisonous snake.He fell backwards on his back.The poisonous snake bit his chest like an arrow, and then slipped away as fast as a thief. He was crying loudly and convulsing all over, and at that moment his parents came home.They hugged him and hurried to find the doctor in the village.The doctor sprinkled the boiled medicinal juice on the wound bitten by the snake, and he was finally saved. He rolled up the hem of his clothes to show me the scar on his chest, the scar was black and the muscles were kinked together in a horrible way. I asked, "Is that a five-step snake?" He said that if it was a five-step snake, he would have died long ago.The five-step snake is the most poisonous. After being bitten, a person will fall to the ground and die within five steps, hence the name.That snake was a krait. Later, I searched for some records about the five-step snake. In "Taiping Guangji", I saw that this kind of snake is "black and has an anti-nosed nose, and it is coiled in the grass. Stimulate the arrow. Sting someone to death. If you hit the hand, you will cut off the hand, and if you hit the foot, you will cut off the foot. There is such a passage in the book: "My ancestor died here, and my father died here. My heir has been with him for twelve years, and the number of dead is countless." It can be seen that this poisonous snake is extremely ferocious, so how did the old man catch such a ferocious snake? of vipers?What kind of person is Lao Gu? We got out of sweat, took off our shirts and tied them around our waists.The young man who is used to walking on mountain roads carries a woven bag on his shoulders, and still walks briskly, but I, who have lived in the city for many years, am out of breath when walking on mountain roads due to lack of exercise.In order to worry about poisonous snakes suddenly appearing in the grass, I held a wooden stick in my hand and looked at both sides of the path in fear. From time to time, I tapped the grass with the stick to let the hidden poisonous snakes escape quickly. As dusk approached, the air became cool and smelled of dampness.An unknown bird called from the depths of the bush, the sound was like a child's endless laughter. The young man said it was a water chicken; there was another animal squatting on the side of the road, poking around, and ran away briskly when it saw us. A puff of smoke ran out, and the young man said it was a weasel badger.These animals, I have never seen in the north before. When I came to the foot of the mountain, I suddenly saw a river lying in front of me. The river was tens of meters wide and bottomless.The dead branches and leaves floating down from the upper reaches swirled and drifted downstream.I stood by the river, helpless. The young man put down the woven bag and walked along the river bank. He said that there was an old boatman nearby and he went to call him.I looked in the direction he was going, and only saw the drifting twilight and heard the endless chirping of insects. Where would there be a boatman? The scenery here is extremely beautiful, with towering green mountains and surrounded by green water, which reminds me of Shen Congwen's, Gu Hua's, and a now-forgotten novel "On the River Without Navigation Mark".Geographically speaking, this place belongs to the southwest, with high mountains and canyons, waterfalls and torrents, combining the roughness of the northwest and the beauty of the south of the Yangtze River.At that moment, I fell in love with this place all of a sudden, it is mysterious, magnificent, and the beauty is dizzying. Ten minutes later, the young man came, followed by an old man with a stooped waist, white hair and beard, could he be the boatman? The old man led us forward for more than ten meters, and lifted a small wooden boat from the grass.He said that there was no one here for several days, so he hid the boat in the grass.The wooden boat is thin and long, like a shuttle.The wooden boat is old, and the broken parts are covered with iron sheets and nailed with iron nails. After the wooden boat was launched, the old man paddled at the stern while we sat on the bow.The moon rises to the top of the mountain and sprinkles the river with clear light. The oars creak and the night is hazy. Fireflies flicker on the bow of the boat, and the peaks on both sides of the river flow slowly to the rear like water.I suddenly felt as if I were in a dream, and here and now, on this moonlit night, on this quiet, cool river, life and life seemed so real and so beautiful.I was infatuated, like a dream, a tear fell from the corner of my eye.In the following life, I can no longer find the feeling of this moment and this place.Life is a river, flowing day and night, I will never be able to truly experience the original feeling again, I can only reminisce in memory.Life flows like water, and what is lost can never be regained.In life, there is always less reunion, more parting, less joy, and more pain. Why are there so many incompleteness in life? After 20 minutes, the old man rowed the wooden boat to the diagonally opposite bank, where there were several stone steps.I asked the old man, "How much is it?" The old man seemed embarrassed, and finally he plucked up the courage to say, "One dollar." I didn't answer, but the old man was worried that I would not agree, so he hurriedly said, "In the past, I didn't ask for money. There is no way now, give me a dollar." I took out 10 yuan to the old man.The old man dodged back and said: "I don't have change." How dare you want it?" Later, the young man gave the old man one yuan, and the old man rowed the boat and left with satisfaction. Watching the back of the old man melt into the night, the creaking sound of oars is still heard on the river.I asked the young man, does the old man have no children?Why are you still rowing at such an age? The young man said that the old man seemed to have no children. In the early years, he often rowed a boat to practice medicine on both sides of the river. He was very good at treating snake venom.Later, there were fewer and fewer poisonous snakes, and a license was required to practice medicine, so the old man made a living by ferrying. I don't know why, but I feel a little sad. People live everywhere, in their own way, and everyone has a hard time.Every life has endless stories, which are wonderful and tortuous, real and touching. I think, when I come back, I will meet the old man again, and I must interview him well.