Reptile & Amphibian Forums

At least the article wasn't too negative towards the snake itself.

Original Link: http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_091807_news_snake_bite.e71569c8.html#

ARTICLE:
Portland man nearly died after putting a pet rattlesnake into his mouth to show off for friends.

Watch KGW report Matt Wilkenson admitted that he made a poor decision, but he’d been drinking and messing around with friends and apparently lost some common sense.

“It's actually kind of my own stupid fault,” he told KGW.

Wilkenson said he’s always felt comfortable with his pet snakes and he thinks they could sense that.

“Their tails would be rattling you reach your hand in the cage and they're more scared of you than you are of them and they wouldn't strike,” he explained.

So when he was showing off his reptile relations with friends, he thought it would be fun to put the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake into his mouth and make them laugh.

However this test of fate was not laughable at all.

The rattlesnake latched onto the back of his throat and send venom surging into his body.

“Me being me, I put his head in my mouth,” Wilkenson recalled. “At first it felt like someone just gave me a shot in the mouth."

And within seconds, his tongue began to swell up, fill his mouth and cut off his airway.

"When your arm falls asleep and it's like a painful fall asleep, it's like that, but 10 times stronger and it was just my whole body,” he told KGW.

Wilkenson was dieing and the pressure forced blood out of his nose. Doctors later told him the snake had shot enough venom in his body to kill as many as 15 people.

He was losing his life as he arrived at Oregon Health and Science University but quick-thinking doctors inserted a breathing tube in his throat and injected anti-venom into his body.

Wilkenson was also put into a medical-induced coma for three days, to give his body time to recover.

Miraculously, it all worked and three weeks later, he’s doing well. The hole in his throat is healing properly and doctors said he’s on the path to a full recovery.

Wilkenson said he’s still a snake guy, but he learned his lesson.

“I still love snakes, but I'll take a little more care in handling them,” he said.

As for the pet rattlesnake, it no longer lives at Wilkenson’s house. But he does still have a young bull snake as a pet that is not venomous.

what a freakin moron...
Link for Video

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The New Redpython.net

I am all for a good laugh, and I occasionally enjoy a few drinks,but I can honestly say it has never crossed my mind stick an Adamanteus in my mouth. I wonder how people with decision making abilities like this survive day to day and live long enough to reproduce. I think most of them become politicians.
Ryan

Or Postal supervisors!!!

but where do they get this stuff? "It shot enough venom into his body to kill 15 people?" Where did the doctor get this figure? He has utterly no idea how much venom was injected. Why does the press take the word of doctors, policemen, deputies, and the like? They know nothing about snakes.

"If we hadn't gotten here when we did, he'd have had only ten minutes to live." (Police & EMTs nationwide) Says who?

"Good thing it was a big snake and not a baby. Babies are worse because they haven't learned how to control their venom and just let you have it all." (University of ***** Medical Center doctor) What herpetologist told you that?

"By the width of the fang marks we determined it to be a six-foot-long rattler." What scale did you use to determine that? (Zamudio, et al, in 2000 showed a 112% expansion in the width of pitviper fangs from the point of rest in the snake's mouth to the point of impact. A rock rattler bite could be interpreted as a diamondback bite by the uninitiated.)

Where do they get this stuff? They lie. Simple as that. They make it up on the spot. Some may fall back urban legands or other stories they've heard. But generally, they literally make it up when the microphone is shoved in their face.

Sorry for the rant. No I'm not!

Terry Vandeventer

Is there ANY question as to why bans are popping up right and left all over the US? I'm sure people would rather ban stupidity, but that would mean unloading a bunch of chlorine into the gene pool and that ain't happenin'!

PS-I could be wrong here, but I believe it's ALREADY illegal in Oregon to have adamanteus...Can any Oregon herpers verify this? If that's the case, this is proof positive that bans flat out work! Don't they? (Dripping sarcasm)

-AzAtrox

Oregon has really wierd herp laws to say the least. But this guy lives in Multnomah County where all hots are illegal. Other counties however do allow certain hots to be kept without permits. To give you some idea of how rediculous the laws are, you can own a B&W Spitting Cobra but it is illegal to own any Boiga species. It's all over the map as to what you can and can't own. Boiga Irregularis had all the bad press in Gaum so they banned them all. Haven't looked in a long time to see whether Eastern are illegal, but you can be sure they will be now.

It is illegal to own B. irregularis ANYWHERE in the U.S., according to the USDA, at least without special permits that I'm guessing only zoos and like institutions are able to acquire. The are considered an invasive species and treated as such.

Title 50: Wildlife and Fisheries
PART 16—INJURIOUS WILDLIFE
Subpart B—Importation or Shipment of Injurious Wildlife

Browse Previous
§ 16.15 Importation of live reptiles or their eggs.

(a) The importation, transportation, or acquisition is prohibited of any live specimen or egg of the brown tree snake ( Boiga irregularis ): Provided, that the Director shall issue permits authorizing the importation, transportation, and possession of such live snakes or viable eggs under the terms and conditions set forth in §16.22.

( B ) Upon the filing of a written declaration with the District Director of Customs at the port of entry as required under §14.61, all other species of live reptiles or their eggs may be imported, transported, and possessed in captivity, without a permit, for scientific, medical, educational, exhibitional or propagating purposes, but no such live reptiles or any progency or eggs thereof may be released into the wild except by the State wildlife conservation agency having jurisdiction over the area of release or by persons having prior written permission for release from such agency.

[55 FR 17441, Apr. 25, 1990]

Thanks to M. Harris who posted this snippet on another forum...I was aware of the ban, but it's nice to have the actual text.

I didn't realize you said they'd banned ALL Boiga. That is downright retarded. Banning an entire genus based on the ill effects of ONE species reeks of idiocy.

Pretty sure all boiga arent banned. I'll check on this but I'm pretty positive thats not the case.
Oregon does have retarded laws, you can keep gaboons but puff adders are illegal. I think they just stuck everything in a hat and every other name they pulled out was marked as illegal.
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Jason

I am with you on this one. I found the guy to have a wonderful sense of humor about the whole thing. He did something stupid after a few beers (which is not the same as being stupid). He did not take out a minivan of soccer players along with the soccer mom/driver, he only hurt himself. The survivability of this incident is a great plus to the hobby as an example of a worst case scenario. I propose that those suggesting death as a better consequence for making mistakes (Darwinism) consider that in terms of legal ramifications, this would not be so good.

"It's actually KIND OF my own stupid fault!?!? Memo to Matt: It was every bit your fault, you sub-human mutoid. Dumber than lint. Dumber than tumbleweed.
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Venomous snakes---best hobby on earth!
Bill Huseth

wow...way to go matt. I live in portland and it looks like even if I wanted hots someday this is all gonna change. How drunk do you have to be to put any rattlesnake in your mouth? I think he should have blacked out before that happened. I'm sorry but I don't think the doctors should have tried so hard messing with darwins principles.
Nate

If you live in Portland, you can't have vens at all...county ordinance..It still didn't stop this moron though...goes to show how well bans really work....

-AzAtrox

The odd this is that it doesn't mention anywhere that he was illegally keeping that snake. Unless I somehow missed it.
Then again, I did see a few headlines that said he was attacked by it. After, of course, he was keeping it illegally and decided to make out with it. Where the attack came from is beyond me, maybe he had bad breath.

Another good example of my post earlier. "He was attacked by the snake." "The snake attack occured when..." The forest Ranger in Wiggins, Mississippi blew his knee cap off a few weeks ago when a snake in his garden "attacked" him.

Rubbish & lies.

Terry vandeventer

yeah I agree with this completely, they say the snake attacked him, but hello, every fact they mentioned in their story and out of his own idiotic mouth, was that he put the rattlers head in his mouth. The snake thought some big predator was eating him, what did he honestly expect? God these jerks make the people who responsibly keep snakes, whether they be venomous or not, look like raving lunatics. We rarely ever get good press, it's 99.9 percent this crappy press that make our hobby look like one that just must be extinquished. I wonder since his tongue looked like something out of a horror movie if that was the reason they didn't say one single word about his own breaking of the law.

Incidently, isn't illegal to harass wildlife as well, not just to own them.

grrrrrr, sorry vent over...

Izora

While I'm not 100% sure I think you can keep just about anything in Multnomah County which is most of Portland. its Washington county that you can't keep hots in witch includes Tigard, Beaverton, Hillsboro and the like. Either way this guy is a complete bonehead. And doing harm to the herp hobby in general.
Nate

I've got a really good friend that lived there (Multnomah Co.) and kept vens...then they passed the ordinance banning them...He was in the paper and everything, protesting the ban...he had to get rid of them all because the county banned them. Just something to keep in mind...

-AzAtrox

Your right I just read Multnohma exotic laws. Doh
I'm glad I don't know this guy
Nate

You can move to eugene/springfield area. They are legal here.
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Jason

so are dirty hippies

LOL! We really should just let survival of the fittest take place and crap like this wouldn't happen anymore. If some drunk jackass kills himself in a reck I still get to keep my car so I should also be able to keep my reptiles.

I hope they didn't give him that snake bite "medication" that turns people into homicidal maniacs,like that guy from Texas.