Pioneer frontier dwellings teemed with snakes and stinging insects pressing on human life

Evidence

I came. A snake, three feet long, was coiled under the pillow of the sick woman. I see snakes in all withered twigs, and am ready to flee at “the sound of a shaken leaf.” And besides snakes, the earth and air are alive and noisy with forms of insect life, large and small, stinging, humming, buzzing, striking, rasping, devouring! — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 61

Categorization

• CANDY: A snake coiled under a sick woman’s pillow is a wonderfully compact, tellable frontier horror image.
• XREF: connects to: Rattlesnakes and other snakes swarmed around pioneer cabins — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 60

Related

• Rattlesnakes and other snakes swarmed around pioneer cabins (similarity 0.91)