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KCIT FOX14 (Amarillo, Texas) 28 May 03 Double Rattlesnake Bite Sends Girl to Hospital (Darcy.Tucker)
Bovina: An 11-year-old Bovina girl is recovering from a rare double bite from a rattlesnake. The Bovina newspaper reports that Maribel Salazar was bitten by the snake at her Bovina home. The paper says the snake struck first outside the house and then followed Salazar inside and bit her again. She was taken to Northwest Texas Healthcare Systems in Amarillo after receiving an anti-venom at Friona's hospital. Salazar suffered severe swelling in her legs and was at risk of amputating a foot or toes.
As summer approaches and temperatures rise, so do the incidents of rattlesnake bites like Salazar's, but there are many misconceptions about what to do if confronted with or bitten by a venomous snake.
'Mojay is a mature diamondback rattler who won't hesitate to strike if threatened. Lucky for you, Mojay is enclosed in his pen at the Big Texan Steak Ranch, but his caretaker, Hody Porterfield, has tips if you meet one of Mojay's buddies in the wild. "Listen to what it sounds like and if you hear that, stop, do not move. Locate it and slowly back away. If you move fast, the snake is going to strike."
Also, try to avoid a confrontation altogether. Porterfield says to make a lot of noise with a stick for example when you're hiking or out and about, chances are the snake will try to avoid you -- and you should avoid him too. "Stay away from where you think snakes may be, which is around piles of lumber, a lot of rocks, any place that a snake could crawl under and stay cool."
However, if you do sustain a snake bite, there is a lot of misinformation about the correct thing to do. Porterfield says, "You do not want to cut into the skin, because the poison will spread. You do not want to use a tourniquet, because that stops the flow of blood and that just makes it worse. You need to keep the bite below the heart."
Just in case, always keep a snake bite kit close by. Whether at your home, in your car, or in your backpack, Porterfield says it could save your life or at least an appendage or two. Snake bite kits are inexpensive and can be found at most sporting goods stores.
Of course, one of the most important things you can do if you're bitten, is stay calm and get to the hospital as soon as possible. It's also important to be aware of your surroundings when you encounter a snake -- where there's one, there's bound to be others.
Double Rattlesnake Bite Sends Girl to Hospital

If rattlesnakes followed people, all we herpers would have to do would be to jump up and down a few times to attract their attention. Then we could sit back on lounge chairs in the shade with cool drinks and wait for them to follow us into our houses. Convenient herping, eh?

Sure wish snakes behaved in real life like they do in news stories. I have no idea what really happened here, but at least now I have a good argument for my boyfriend the next time he raises an eyebrow at a new addition to the collection. "Um, it followed me home. Really. See, this newspaper says that rattlesnakes do that. If they printed it, it has to be true." LOL

I like how the guy says don't use a tourniquet or cut...then goes on to say to keep a snakebite kit closeby. Um, what's in a snakebite kit besides a ligature to make a tourniquet from & a scalpel blade? Not much.

~~Greg~~
Florida's Venomous Snakes

That he meant the Sawyer venom extraction kit, which is sold at Walmarts where I live. (those are good, right? I have one).

>>That he meant the Sawyer venom extraction kit, which is sold at Walmarts where I live. (those are good, right? I have one).

Actually, the limited available evidence suggests that they don't do much good, but can exacerbate local necrosis. Sawyer kits are better than tourniquet scalpel, because they will give you a nickel-sized area of necrosis rather than a necrotic limb requiring amputation. Such is the nature of progress in snakebite First Aid.

Cheers,

Wolfgang
-----
WW

WW Home

Well... I'll keep it around for bee stings, maybe I can at least hope for a placebo effect or something.

...but just to play reporter's advocate...

Perhaps all the snake saw was a foot going by and mistook it for a mouse, bit it and then followed the scent trail looking for a dead mouse, at which point it may very well have been kicked at by a hysterical little kid lying on the ground and bit again in defense... Probably not, but I could see it happening.