TIMES HERALD-RECORD (Middletown, New York) 03 August 08 It's time to turn the public's fear of snakes into knowledge (Wayne Hall)
Guy Gravenson, a retired advertising executive from Blooming Grove, wants to set a couple of records straight about threatened timber rattlesnakes, which inhabit his neck of the woods.
He likes them. There's a rattler who moseys around his garden, taking a toll of rodents.
And, snakes, in general, it must be said, are sinuously beautiful, colorful and have a basic right to the reptilian pursuit of happiness. Right now, there's lots of them foraging, seeking mates, soaking up rays. Most are harmless.
But we've got a people problem. More of us now are living where snakes hang out.
So before I tell you what happened to Gravenson, listen to venomous-snake wrangler Marty Kupersmith of Warwick, whose name, along with nuisance-snake remover Randy Stechert, is known to local police and hopefully other first responders.
Kupersmith says "People have a fear of snakes" that's unfounded. His point: Snakes will get out of your way first if they can. And people need to learn which snakes are which.
"I got a call from a guy who said 'Help me, there's a huge snake in my basement,' he says. "It was a harmless ring snake about 10 inches long."
Then there was the 5-foot-long black rat snake coiled up on a Greenwood Lake man's TV table, on a doily. Kupersmith slipped his hand under the doily and lifted the still-coiled snake out of the house.
Moral: Use Google, the library, the Nature Museum of the Hudson Highlands, buy a field guide. It's time, if you live where snakes roam, to know the venomous rattlers and copperheads from the harmless milk snakes, black rat snakes and garter snakes.
So what happened to Gravenson? This is a 69-year-old man who still knows his Boy Scout manual. Good thing.
In a freak accidental meeting, Gravenson's hand was searching a high blueberry bush for blueberries when a rattler up on a limb nailed his left index finger. The snake may have been up there looking for a bird or mouse. Maybe it was snoozing and its mammalian heat detector triggered and it struck — mistaking a finger for prey.
Gravenson kept his cool. He shook the snake from the bush, coaxed it into his blueberry collecting bag and took it down to a terrarium he borrowed so first responders would know it was a rattler.
He sucked the poison. He felt nauseous. He called 911 before passing out, but his mouth was numbed by venom and they couldn't hear him too well. He did not, as reported, vomit blood — it was blueberries and coffee he'd had for breakfast. Gravenson got oxygen, and the best immediate care, he said, from the Blooming Grove first responders. He was airlifted to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx.
Apparently, he becomes just the second serious rattler bite case in the region (he had a serious allergic reaction to the bite and was apparently allergic to the first round of anti-venom serum).
The last known fatal snakebite killed the former head keeper of reptiles at the Bronx Zoo, Charles E. Snyder, in 1929 when he was poking around the mountains near Tuxedo for rattlers to add to his private collection. At the time, he was a lecturer on snakes.
Gravenson perceives a lack of public information — or interest — about nature, especially snakes. In Mountain Lodge Park there are hundreds of families, he says.
Maybe it's time for a public Mountain Lodge Park meet-the-snakes meeting, to get to know the do's and don'ts about this special habitat.
It's time to turn the public's fear of snakes into knowledge