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WKYT (Lexington, Kentucky) 10 April 05 Frightening Moments For A Family And A Little Girl
A little Lexington girl is now out of the hospital, but lucky to be alive. It all started after a trip to Harlan County, and a fall she won't soon forget.
Four-year-old Maddison Howard was playing outside while visiting family in Harlan. "We were trying to catch a little puppy."
Maddison says she fell in a hole and was the victim of what doctors think was a snake bite, possibly from a copperhead.
Debra Bolton is Maddison's great aunt. "That's the only thing we ever see in our yard, and we didn't see this one. It had been three or four years since we'd even seen a snake in our yard."
Maddison's leg didn't show signs of the bite at first. "It didn't hurt, but I was bleeding."
Bolton says, "We were really frightened, because we didn't know what had happened to her and what was going to happen."
Thirty minutes later, Maddison's leg began to swell severely and quiver. That's when her family decided it was time to go to the hospital in Harlan. Later, she was transferred to the UK Children's Hospital.
Suzanne Stanhope is Maddison's mother. "When she was in Harlan, I wasn't quite as concerned because I didn't know what had happened yet. I got here (in Lexington) and saw her leg, then I lost it."
To see this bright eyed four-year-old now, it's hard to tell anything is wrong, except when she strains to move her injured leg.
Maddison could have had to have surgery or suffered nerve or liver damage, but she didn't. She was even let out of ICU early. Her family is just thankful she is going to be okay.
It could take Maddison several weeks to recover from the snake bite. She has to continue therapy on her leg in order to gain her strength back.
Frightening Moments For A Family And A Little Girl

Hmmm...let's see here....Adults knew there was a "hole" in their yard....Adults allow a 4 year old little girl play around unsupervised to the extent that this allows her to "fall into this hole"....Girl is bitten by a snake while in this hole....Does that about sum it up?

Well, if this isn't model parenting, I don't know what is....

Maybe I'm a little off-base here, but if there's a hole in a yard large enough for a 4 year old to fall into, am I REALLY going to let this child play around it? That's similar to allowing a 4 year old to play around a swimming pool....I'd be more concerned with her "falling into this hole" and breaking her neck than I would a copperhead bite...Either way, my child wouldn't even come close to this hole....

Then again, perhaps this is Darwinism at it's best! STUPID PARENTS!!!!

-AzAtrox

"fell in a hole" is pretty vague. It could have been a foot deep...

I hope the snake is ok. I'd hate to hear that it got stepped on and hurt. (tongue in cheek of course) but seriously...

Never was there any mention about anyone going back and looking for the snake or anything like that. This story seems to be based purely all on speculation. Any reasonable hospital would have done blood tests to determine any toxicology in the blood before they started treating some inexplicable swelling.
So was it a snake or was it a sharp object in the hole that happened to have some ugly bacteria growing on it that punctured the girls skin. Or maybe it was a platypus.
So, wheres the pudding?????
Im glad the little girl is ok.
-----
Tom
TCJ Herps
"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"