A Missionary's Daughter in India

     One afternoon my small sister, Ona, and our dog, Blotter, were playing in the driveway that encircled the house.  Hedges lined the drive from the main road to the front of the bungalow and around to the rear on either side.  The tennis court was on the other side of the hedges.  Ona and Blotter were three feet from the hedge when Mother called Ona in for the daily afternoon "tea."  Ona went in leaving Blotter near the hedge.  In two minutes, Blotter ran screaming up onto the back veranda, where he died at once.

     Petras said it was a cobra and that Blotter had very obviously sniffed in the hedge and disturbed it in the heat of the day.  Dad was on tour in the villages so Petras organized the men from the fields and the older boys from school for the hunt.  They dug for three hours with a man standing ever ready with a crowbar to crush the head of the cobra if it should snap out. The men dug out hundreds of rat tunnels and the cobra evaded the shovel by crawling deeper and deeper.  One small cobra was killed, but Petras said it had been a six foot one that had killed Blotter.  Finally there were no more rat holes and the huge coils of the snake began to show through the dirt.  The crowbar came down on each coil so that the snake was a mass of broken bones but not until the small head projecting from the large open hood was crushed, did the men put down their implements.

     At the rear of the compound stood the open stables for the two rnission bullocks.  One day one of the bullocks grew too curious and put his nose up to the wall.  A cobra sank his poison into the nose and the bullock writhed into his death four hours later, the poison resisting the efforts of the veterinary attendants who rushed out a mile from the town offices.  A man could die in about an hour and smaller creatures in minutes.  There would never be time to rush anti-venom from Bombay, 400 miles away.  Immediately, the men of the compound congregated at the stables.  Dad told the men that they had to methodically tear the building apart and get all the rest of the cobras or else they would lose their other bullocks.  Stone by stone, the building was razed and one after another the cobras hissed out to be killed with crowbars.  One tough fellow gave rather a fight.  Riskily kneeling within six feet of the furious snake, Dad shot it.  So much dust was stirred up by the wounded snake that no one knew what had happened.  In a few seconds, it was apparent that the bullet had severed the tiny head of the cobra.  A cheer went up all around. 

     Bear in mind that these were Christian people who cheered.  The Hindus consider all animals sacred.  The Hindus worship the cobra, particularly in South India.  The cobras were all soon dispatched.  The building and the trough, which had been dismantled pretty thoroughly, were rebuilt.