SHREVEPORT TIMES (Louisiana) 19 July 05 Haughton boy survives snakebite - About 12 bites reported locally each year (James Ramage)
Lynn Schopp always warned her son about playing in tall grass and ditches in and around their Haughton neighborhood where poisonous snakes could be.
But 8-year-old Brandon Judd didn't see the copperhead on the side of the road near his home at dusk until it bit him on the ankle.
"It hurt like heck," Brandon said. "It hurt real bad."
And the three days he spent recovering in hospital beds were not how he wanted to spend his Fourth of July weekend.
"There were two of them," Schopp said of the snakes. "(Brandon) didn't really notice them. One went into the grass. The other lunged and bit him. He felt the pinch when it put in its fangs."
Copperheads, such as the 16-inch-long one that bit Brandon, are one of five of the 40 or so species of snakes indigenous to the area that are venomous, according to naturalist Larry Raymond of Walter B. Jacobs Memorial Nature Park three miles west of Blanchard. The four others are water moccasins or cottonmouths, canebrake rattlesnakes, pygmy rattlesnakes and coral snakes.
About a dozen snakebites are reported locally to the Louisiana Poison Control Center each year, said Dr. Thomas Arnold, the center's medical director as well as a medical toxicologist and chairman of emergency medicine at LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport. And that number most likely is low, he said. There has also been one local snakebite fatality in the past year, Arnold added.
As housing development spreads into wooded areas, people are moving into venomous snakes' natural habitat, prompting the possibility for more encounters, he said.
"I would say (snakebites) are a problem. Many of those people were minding their own business when they were bitten. A fair number of people are in the wrong place at the wrong time."
This was the case for Brandon, he and his mother said.
Brandon and a friend were walking their bikes over to see a neighbor's donkeys when he was bitten July 2, the two said. Schopp called for an ambulance while two neighbors killed the snake.
Copperhead bites can cause extensive damage to surrounding tissue and small blood vessels and can even prove fatal in certain victims and if left untreated, Raymond said.
Brandon was given four doses of antivenin because the area around the bite developed redness and swelling, said Dr. Steen Trawick, a pediatric hospitalist at Christus Schumpert Sutton Children's Medical Center. They put Brandon on antibiotics and, after the swelling improved, made sure he wasn't going to have any further problems before sending him home July 5.
"You can have problems with antivenin too, like allergic reactions, low blood pressure or breathing problems," Trawick said.
All local hospitals should be equipped with at least six to 10 vials of antivenin to treat a snakebite victim, Arnold said. Each vial can cost up to $950, he added. Four to six vials are needed for each bite involving an injection of snake venom; only about 25 percent of those involving poisonous snakes in the United States do.
"Time is tissue," Arnold said. "Rather, the progression of swelling means time is of the essence. More time means more damage to the microvascular system. Local tissue and microvascular damage (near the bite) takes a long time to heal."
Schopp said her son's ankle is a little tender and that he still limps sometimes but otherwise has gone back to being an 8-year-old.
Brandon said he "doesn't want anything to do with snakes." But, typical of 8-year-olds, his mom added, he still has no fear of playing in tall grass or ditches where they may be found.
Haughton boy survives snakebite