*Warning: bloody pics below*
Well I’ve gone 4 years without a bite from a snake over 2’ so it figures that when it finally happened again it was the largest boa that got me! Autumn, my 7.5’ BCi tagged my right hand during feeding time. It was a stupid feeding error (SFE) on my part. I was watching t.v. and feeding a few snakes during each commercial break (that’ll teach me to not pay 100% attention!). I usually hold open the door on the cage a little and slide the f/t rat in on tongs for the snake to take. The door slipped out of my left hand so I quickly pulled back my right hand with the tongs and rat, Bammo! She nabbed my hand instead of the rat. Came halfway out coiled my hand and arm. Luckily in a stressful situation (like a car accident) I always tend to get calm and clear-headed so I got her behind the head with my left hand and was able to pull her the rest of the way out of the cage (she didn’t have anything to anchor onto in the cage) and dragged her out of the snake room and into the bathroom with the intention of putting her head under water. Right when I was about to, she let go (ouch! Those top teeth scraped me up good). Last time I got nabbed by a 6’ boa it was the same way, by holding behind the neck and getting out of the room with the rat smell, then let go pretty quickly. Autumn has always been what I consider my ‘tamest’ snake, I’ve had her almost 10 years now and this was the first bite. Just goes to show that they are still wild animals that run on instinct. I still love my big angel; I know it was my fault completely.

So, on to the pics:
Right after the bite, washed off once so far, I like how the flash washed it out making the blood really red and gory:




Here it is after being washed off and cleaned up, she had my thumb and 3 fingers in her mouth.


And the next morning – not looking too bad… you can see a perfect outline of her bottom jaw along the bottom of my hand!


Just to compare to my other hand, you can see the swelling on the fingers.


I don’t have any recent pics of Autumn, so here’s a bad picture I took over the weekend of LemonDrop (‘98 PK albino), who is about ½’ shorter than Autumn, to give a size reference.


What a fun weekend! Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!
-April
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'There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."' -Rainshadow

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