100 years ago in Spokane: A home renovation project was inspired by a snake, the injured aviator was doing (mostly) better and the lumber industry was in jeopardy

Mrs. M.E. Mack of Spokane peered into her coffee pot to see a startling sight: an 18-inch bull snake.

She was so alarmed she called police. The officer tried to capture the snake, but it slithered through a hole next to the drain pipe and escaped into the basement.

“A hole will have to be sawed in the house to capture the snake,” the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported. “Mrs. Mack emphatically declared that this would be done.”

From the aviator beat: Dr. S.E. Lambert confidently predicted that, “with ordinary luck,” Daisy Smith, Spokane’s sole woman aviator, would completely recover.

The doctor warned, however, that “the mending process may be a matter of months.” In addition to a fractured skulll, she also suffered a broken leg and internal injuries in her Parkwater crash. Once her condition allowed, she would have to undergo surgery for her internal injuries.

Dr. Lambert admitted that “her physical condition was improving more rapidly than her mentality.” She had been drifting in and out of consciousness for a week since the crash.

As it turned out, she would remain in the hospital for most of 1923. She would mostly recover, despite some lingering effects.

From the lumber beat: The Phoenix Lumber Company Mill at Wall Street and the Spokane River closed and laid off 50 workers.

This was a sign of trouble ahead for the region’s logging industry. The company’s logging camp at Sprindale had closed several weeks earlier.