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BONITA DAILY NEWS (Florida) 13 June 06 Bonita man might be first coral snake victim in 40 years - Stanford University snake venom expert says no deaths from coral snakes have been reported since the 1960s (Kate Spinner)
When the coral snake slithered among them a couple hours before dusk Saturday, the men had been sitting around drinking long-neck bottles of Budweiser in a wide and littered clearing they had made for themselves in the saw palmettos.
Within a couple hours, one man would be dead and another in the hospital, clutching a gallon bottle stuffed with the battered snake.
According to the Lee County Sheriff's Office, Fernando Hernandez, 29, collapsed at the edge of the Seminole Collier Railroad a few yards west of Buffalo Chips restaurant on Old 41 Road and died from a snake bite. Medic Paul Fergueson pronounced Hernandez dead at 10:15 p.m. The medical examiner's office is awaiting toxicology reports to confirm the cause of death.
Robert Norris, a snake venom expert and chief of emergency medicine at Stanford University, said he suspects Hernandez is the first coral snake fatality on record in the United States since the discovery of anti-venom 40 years ago. Since the 1960s, he said, no deaths from coral snake bites have been reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers.
"It's possible that one could slip through the cracks, but this is very unusual," Norris said. "If there are others, they've not been put in the medical literature."
Another expert isn't so sure medical history was made Saturday.
Joseph Gennaro, a retired professor from the University of Florida Medical Center, said several people in Florida receive coral snake bites each month and he surmised that although death from a coral snake bite is rare it does occur.
Gennaro said that unlike the fiery sting of a rattlesnake bite, the bite of a coral snake feels as faint as a pin prick. Sometimes people don't even know when they've been bitten, Gennaro said.
The venom is also insidious, working its way slowly through the bloodstream, gradually numbing nerves. A victim's inability to keep his or her eyes open is the first sign of poison, but it can take an hour or two for that poison to set in. When it does set in, the victim suffocates from lung paralysis.
He said treatment of a bite is arduous and requires pressure immobilization bandages as well as anti-venom. Two years ago a man was bit in Gainesville and it took 20 days for him to recover, Gennaro said.
Sheriff's spokeswoman Ilena LiMarzi said Jesus Moreida, also bitten by the coral snake, rode his bicycle from woods to the Bonita Springs Fire and Rescue Station. She said an ambulance took him to North Collier Hospital, but the hospital had no record of a man by that name. Neither did Lee County Memorial.
Barely visible past the row of tattered mobile homes that sit behind Buffalo Chips, a splash of blue tarp peeks out from the overgrown saw palmettos and towering slash pines that stand between the railroad tracks and Rosemary Creek, which borders the restaurant's property.
Under the cover of the forest, men live in tents and stroll a network of trails to grill fish by the creek, eat a snack of sardines by the railroad or drink alcohol in a burnt clearing littered with beer cans, beer bottles, food containers, plastic wrappers and the general refuse of daily life without curbside pickup.
The trails branch like mazes through the sharp brambles and bushes and they lead over the creek to a sidewalk just south of the restaurant.
Jose Luis Morales has been living in the woods for 10 years and has seen plenty of venomous snakes in Rosemary Creek and by the railroad.
He proved it Monday afternoon by holding up a half-dead water moccasin with a long stick. He charged past the creek bed and into a clearing where he dropped the snake to the dirt and hammered it to death.
No doubt there are venomous snakes in the woods, but Morales never saw a man die the way Hernandez did.
"He was a good guy with all respect," Morales said. "That's why we all cried."
Morales said Hernandez, whom he referred to as Cresencio Hernandez, originally of Ocotlan de Morelos near Oaxaca, Mexico, rented an apartment in Old Bonita Springs. The Sheriff's Office reported he worked part time for Able Body, a company that hires workers for odd jobs on a day-to-day, first-come basis.
Five men milled around by the creek with Morales on Monday, wearing sorrowful faces and stained clothes while they sipped from cans of Natural Light.
Standing by the creek, one man scaled sunfish beside a black charcoal grill and placed the prepared fish in a small bucket. In the milky water of the creek two long-nose gar investigated the bank for a moment before swimming away.
Except for the cell phones the men carry and the beer, life is at its most basic living out there in tents by the railroad. There a no bathrooms, no vehicles, no easy ride to the hospital.
Sometimes, out there, fear or drunkenness or a combination of both obfuscates good judgment, as it did the night Hernandez passed away.
Tiny as it was, the serpentine visitor, with gold and crimson bands ringing its body, was unwelcome in the home the men had made for themselves.
Daniel Gonzalez beat the snake with a branch, but it didn't retreat. Hernandez took a few whacks at the creature, chasing it toward Jesus Moreida, who remained seated on the ground. Moreida grabbed the reptile to move it out of the way, but it bit him in the hand. In a rage, Hernandez stomped on it. Then he broke a beer bottle and with the jagged glass began to slash the snake. Meanwhile the snake also bit him several times on the forearm, according to a Lee County Sheriff's report.
With the dead snake in the gallon container, Moreida hopped on a bicycle and rode through the saw palmetto maze. He emerged on the Old 41 sidewalk and pedaled to the Fire Station less than a mile away. From there he got a ride to the hospital, said Joseph Lawhon, Bonita Springs Fire and Rescue District captain.
Back at the camp, Gonzalez and Hernandez continued to drink. They grabbed a can of sardines and went to eat the food by the railroad tracks, according to Morales who was sleeping at the time and heard the story secondhand.
As daylight waned, Alfredo Lucas disturbed Morales' slumber to tell him that Fernandez had died. Several men said they called 911, but the sheriff's report credits Gonzalez for the call at 7:44 p.m.
Morales pointed out the spot where his friend had died, a bare patch of earth that sloped to the train track. From the pine trees, yellow strands of police tape still swayed in the slight breeze.
Bonita man might be first coral snake victim in 40 years

Geee , if bitten that many times while trying to kill the snake It's no surprise to me that he ended up dead.

Al
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Law of Logical Argument: Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

NEWS PRESS (Fort Myers, Florida) 14 June 06 Snake bite thought fatal - Man dies, another bitten in encounter (Denes Husty Iii)
A medical examiner must answer a rare question: Did a coral snake bite deliver enough poison into a Bonita Springs man's body to kill him in a matter of minutes?
It may take up to two months for Dr. Robert Pfalzgraf, deputy chief medical examiner for District 21 in Fort Myers, to find out.
If the coral snake did kill Inocencio Hernandez-Hernandez, 29, his may be the first such death in more than four decades, authorities said.
"We just don't hear of a lot of fatalities from coral snake bites," said Carl Barden, director of Medtoxin Venom Laboratories in DeLand.
A toxicology test was ordered to rule out any other possible cause of death, Pfalzgraf said.
Pfalzgraf said that during the autopsy, he found a small puncture wound on one of the victim's fingers.
If a coral snake had not been identified in this case, Pfalzgraf said that he may have thought the wound was something other than a snake bite.
"A coral snake bite is pretty innocuous-looking, unlike a rattlesnake bite," the doctor said.
Coral snakes don't have large fangs like rattlesnakes, said JoAnn Chambers-Emerson, educator for the Florida Poison Information Center office in Tampa.
But coral snake venom is much deadlier, Barden said.
Whereas a lethal dose of rattlesnake venom is usually 100 to 150 milligrams, a lethal dose of coral snake venom is usually 5 milligrams for an adult, Barden said.
"It has a very, very powerful neurotoxin in it," he said.
The poison, Barden said, attacks the nervous system and, if untreated, causes a person to stop breathing.
He thinks the test results will confirm his suspicion.
"I expect this was a death caused by a coral snake," Pfalzgraf said.
The events leading to Hernandez-Hernandez's death began Saturday evening in the woods behind Buffalo Chips restaurant west of Old U.S. 41 near the railroad tracks in Bonita Springs, deputies said.
Hernandez-Hernandez and his friends were drinking beer and found a snake, a case report said.
Friend Daniel Gonzalez said he struck the snake several times with a tree branch.
Hernandez-Hernandez did likewise and was bitten when he tried to move the snake with his hands.
Hernandez-Hernandez then stomped the snake with his boots and cut it with a broken beer bottle.
Another friend, Jesus Moreida, was bitten while putting the snake into a plastic jug.
Moreida went to Bonita Springs Fire Station 1, where a firefighter identified the reptile as a coral snake. Moreida was taken to North Collier Hospital.
Hospital officials said they had no record of a person by that name being treated there or its affiliate, Naples Community Hospital, or at Lee Memorial Hospital.
Back at the camp, Hernandez-Hernandez collapsed a short time after he was bitten, Gonzalez said. Gonzalez went for help.
Medics pronounced Hernandez-Hernandez dead at the scene.
"The person who was with him told us he didn't last more than 15 minutes before he fell and started foaming at the mouth," said Noel Bautista, who lives in the woods.
Hernandez-Hernandez "was a hard worker and he liked his beer, but he was easygoing," Bautista said.
Friends identified the victim as Fernando Hernandez, but relatives Tuesday gave his real name to medical examiners.
Although a coral snake's poison is extremely lethal, deaths are rare because of anti-venom like that produced by his laboratory, Barden said.
The anti-venom was developed in 1967, said Dr. Robert Norris, chief of emergency medicine at Stanford University and a snake poison expert.
Since the anti-venom was developed, no deaths have been reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, he said.
The last mention of a coral snake bite death he could find in medical literature was in 1963 in Florida, Norris said.
"The reason this guy had a bad outcome is that he didn't seek treatment," Norris said.
• Coral snakes are 20 to 35 inches long and have red and yellow bands.
• There are an average of 8,000 poisonous snake bites in the United States annually, including six to eight fatal bites, mostly by rattlesnakes and none by coral snakes, according to Carl Barden, director of Medtoxin Venom Laboratories in DeLand.
• 56 coral snake bites, but no fatalities, have been reported to the Florida Poison Information Center since Jan. 1, 2005. There have been no deaths recorded since the agency began keeping computer records in 2000.
• 5 milligrams of coral snake venom may be enough to kill a person if the bite goes untreated.
• Coral snake anti-venom first developed in 1967.
• To avoid being bitten, the old saying holds true: "Red and yellow, kill a fellow."
• For more information, go to www.snakesandfrogs.com.
Snake bite thought fatal - Man dies, another bitten in encounter

This is a classic example of an illegitimate bite. The vast majority of North American snakebites fall into this category. A legitimate bite is one where the victim did not see the snake before the bite occurred.

~~Greg~~