Twenty years ago, at the front of the east end of our village, there were five red-brick bungalows with no exterior painting, which were still more conspicuous in the countryside at that time. Inside the house lived a young couple who had been married for three or four years. The two couples were very capable. They bought rice from our neighbourhood and ground them into rice. They used a Fei Cai tricycle to drive to Shandong and exchanged rice for corn. The corn we buy is brought back to us for sale, and then we will buy rice to go to Shandong. Because the place in Shandong produces corn but no rice, we have rice but no corn, so we make a difference in the price. If this continues, they will be in the village. The part of the people who got rich first, but some things often did not happen. It happened on a summer evening. It was raining lightly. The couple bought a tricycle full of rice near us and covered them with plastic paper. An old dirt road at the east end of the village slowly drove into the village. When we got home, it was already dark. The couple parked the car at the door of the bungalow. The man inspected the rain cloth in the light rain, and the couple went into the bungalow. As a result of the day’s tiredness and the rain, they both It was cold and hungry, so I was busy preparing to cook and eat, and asked the man how we should eat. The man said: I have to go to Shandong early tomorrow, and I will cook some noodles tonight to save trouble.
So my wife went to the kitchen outside to boil the water. After the water boiled, the wife came to the bungalow and took two handfuls of dried noodles and a few more eggs, and went to the kitchen Then, first put the eggs in the pot, and after the eggs are formed, put the noodles down and stir, then go to the bungalow to get the dishes and chopsticks, wash them in the vegetable bowl outside the kitchen, and prepare to put the noodles. When she walked into the kitchen with the bowls and chopsticks, she was stunned by the scene in front of her. Two piebald snakes (or house pythons) were leaning down from the kitchen shed. The heads of the two snakes were already hanging on the top of the pot. , Sneered spitting out the letter, probably because he wanted to eat the eggs in the pot. The woman screamed in fright, threw away the dishes, ran into the bungalow, and told the man that there were two big snakes on the pot table. The man ran to the kitchen door to take a look, and was very frightened, then ran outside to get it. Here comes a hoe (a tool used to weed crops in rural areas). The woman finds a shovel. The man uses the hoe to smash the head of the big snake with arms nearly two meters long, and the smaller one wants to climb. Going back to the eaves, he took the shovel from the woman’s hand and hacked it for a while, and finally the one fell down…
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Second In the morning, when the couple got out of the car, they picked two snakes on the beam behind the car and drove slowly towards the entrance of the village. A group of elementary school children followed behind and screamed and ran like monkeys. There was an inconspicuous boy in this group of children who was me. The car dragged two piebald snakes to a place called Qiaokou at the entrance of the village (because that place was the entrance of the village, and there was an old bridge built before liberation, so I used to The place is called the bridge entrance. There is an old mulberry tree beside the bridge that has grown for many years. When there are dead people in the village, you have to go to that place to burn paper money), the man gets off the carTwo snakes were hung one by one on the mulberry branch with a wooden stick, and then they drove a tricycle with the woman on the road to Shandong. I was standing in front of the mulberry tree, watching the two snakes still dripping blood down their bodies, and I felt that it was so big, so innocent, and so pitiful…
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Since there were two unusual dead snakes on the mulberry tree, whether it is after school or going to school, there are always many children watching them for a while, and sometimes they hear some adults talking about these two snakes. Snakes’ opinions and guesses, saying that they shouldn’t be killed, it’s not easy to grow so big, and they were discovered at home. They should be house dragons, the gods who guard the house, and won’t hurt people. It’s not so easy to be killed if you want to hurt someone. Two or three days have passed between people’s discussion and school. One afternoon the landlord passed the bridge entrance and saw a tricycle overturned under the bridge. He intuitively told me that it was their car. I was standing in the car. Before, looking at the two piebald snakes on the mulberry tree by the bridge were so dazzling and terrifying. I heard the adults say that after the car turned over, the woman was fine. The man was pressed under the car. A few months after seeing that man, he appeared in the village in a wheelchair…