TAMPA TRIBUNE (Florida) 14 June 04 Snake Encounters (Jim Tunstall)
Tim Williams says the numbness hit him first.
``I knew it was a bad bite because of the amount of blood,'' he says.
``It's hard to believe there was that much from two holes the size of hypodermics.''
The swelling came next.
Then the pain.
``They gave me nine vials of antivenin and, I think, morphine,'' says Williams, a reptile handler at Gatorland, an attraction south of Orlando.
``It wasn't bad if I kept my arm still, but if I moved it, it felt like someone was pouring gas on it.''
That bite, compliments of an eastern diamondback rattlesnake, is his only one in more than three decades of handling venomous snakes. It happened two years ago while he was teaching a class to paramedics.
``The snake wouldn't stay on the hook I was using, and I reached down to pick it up - then bang!'' says Williams, who learned his trade from the late great reptile expert Ross Allen.
``It got me on the right hand in the soft spot between the thumb and forefinger.''
He was in the hospital 10 days and on the disabled list awhile longer.
``I lost one-third of the mass in my forearm, but it's back now and so is the use of my hand,'' he says.
``I was very lucky.''
F. Wayne King, curator of herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, agrees.
``A big rattlesnake can put a lot of venom in you,'' King says.
They're also ``the most likely to kill you,'' says Gainesville physician and medical Professor Craig Kitchens, who has treated more than 500 snakebites in the past 30 years.
Diamondbacks don't have the deadliest poison among Florida's six venomous species.
Arguably, that honor goes to eastern coral snakes, which are related to cobras.
Their bite can be deadly.
But their venom is injected in only one of five bites, King says.
Dusky pygmy rattlesnakes, also called ground rattlers, probably are the most aggressive of the six.
``They're a little guy with a big chip,'' King says. ``Their bite is terribly painful.''
They account for 40 percent of venomous snakebites in Florida, Kitchens says. ``But there's never been a recorded death'' from a pygmy bite.
Cottonmouths or water moccasins are another species that don't often kill, but they cause a lot of swelling, he says.
The remaining two - Southern copperheads and timber, or canebrake, rattlesnakes - live throughout most of the Southeast but are pretty much limited in Florida to the northernmost counties.
Although this is the time of year that Florida snakes move around a lot, encounters aren't very common and bites less so.
That's because snakes prefer to hide. Most don't want an encounter any more than you do.
If you come face to face, the best advice is to play it safe, experts say.
Give them a wide berth.
Look, if you like, but don't touch.
And don't blindly explore inside holes or under rocks and logs.
Finally, if you run into one at close range - freeze. Don't run. Let it move away first.
An eastern diamondback is a big snake that can strike two- thirds the length of its body.
It's lightning quick.
Just ask Williams.
Snake Encounters