Teodora Cuero’s snake story

Teodora Cuero from La Huerta in Baja (see Bladderpod post above) told us a gathering story, which anthropologist Mike Wilken translated:

I went with my daughter and my son-in-law. It took us about an hour from my house to get up there to gather the sweet acorns. We found one tree that had a lot of the sweet acorns down below it. They just fall off on the ground.

And so I sat down on the ground, and once I’m sitting down—I’ll get all the way down on the ground—I can’t get up by myself. I need people to pull me to get up. And so there I was laying down on the ground gathering acorns. I was gathering and I didn’t even notice there was one of those very poisonous rattlesnakes coiled up right there. And I touched that rattlesnake. When I touched it and noticed it was a rattlesnake, I don’t know how I did it, but I was standing up right away!! I don’t remember how I got up there, I just did.

These rattlesnakes are so bad that if they bite you, you won’t go more than 4 steps.

The rattlesnake basket above was woven by Abe Sanchez, master basketweaver. The rattlesnake basket above is from San Jose de la Zorra, a basketweaving village in Baja.

~ by deborah small on September 25, 2009.