1996 #2 - Austin Genealogical Society

AGS Quarterlv Volw XXXVII. No. a! IJu ne 4 996) Ancestor Listino Paaes Austin. TX
---- NO REST WITH A RATTLER
by Ruth Hardt Koehler
Almost every spring, there are articles in the papers about
rattlesnake roundups. The weather is turning warm and the snakes
are beginning to come out of their dens into the warm sunshine.
It has also become a way of making money with the selling of snake
skins for boots, billfolds, belts, and other items. When I read
these stories, an event in my memory again becomes vivid and I
wonder why anyone takes the chance of being bitten!
It was a time of my life that I will never forget. Having
just had my third birthday on February 27, 1924, it is probably
one of my most impressive memories. We lived on the ranch at
Yancey, in Medina County, Texas, and my mother's Frick family from
San Antonio always loved visiting in the country; it was always
one of our favorite times. The Frick family was a family of love,
laughter and joyful living in spite of life's many hardships.
On the weekend of May 29, 1927, we had a houseful of guests
and all the beds were occupied; so my parents, Anton and Laura
Frick Hardt, along with my nineteen month old baby brother, Calvin,
whom my father nicknamed "Pete", slept on a pallet on the
screened back porch.
About 3:30 in the morning of May 30th, my mother was awakened
with a severe pain above her eye. For a few minutes, she said,
she sat up in bed and pressed her hand against her forehead thinking
she could. suppress the pain. But as the burning sensation
continued, she got up and in the dark went into the kitchen and
bathed her forehead with cold water thinking this might ease the
pain. When this gave no relief, she got some matches and took
them to my father who was lying on the pallet. Thinking it could
probably be a scorpion, she told him they had better look for fear
it might sting the baby. He took the match, reached over and lit
it on the floor and as he did so he saw a diamondback rattlesnake
slowly crawling away between the two pillows just beneath his arm.
Immediately upon seeing it he screamed, "It's a rattlesnake".
He struck at it with a hammer which was lying nearby but it
crawled through a crack in the floor and as it crawled away it
rattled.
By the time my mother reached the front bed room, she felt as
if she was going to faint; so she immediately lay down and my father
who had been a nurse in World War I sucked the wound which he
continued doing for about fifteen minutes. About ten or fifteen
minutes after the bite her head began to swell and in a few seconds
it was so swollen that she could not see. About fifty minutes
after she was bitten, Dr. W. H. Smith of Hondo, Texas, which
is thirteen miles from where we lived, arrived to administer the
anti-venom serum, after which he lanced the bite from fang to
fang. By this time she started vomiting blood and also hemorrhaging
from her kidneys. I can vividly remember sneaking into the
adjoining bedroom and peeping around the corner of the door to see
the doctor as he worked.
A loving aunt gently pulled me away.
Then she was taken to the Mechler Hospital in Hondo where
they gave her a second anti-venom serum injection. She continued
hemorrhaging for about six hours and her pulse was so weak that
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