TIMES-UNION (Jacksonville, Florida) 16 September 10 Machete, fangs and a miracle (Terry Dickson)

Brunswick: A dead battery started a chain of events that almost killed Gene Waller.

About six weeks ago, Waller got up early. His 25 acres in the Otter Creek community east of Blackshear has about 10 miles of trails running through it where his five grandchildren love to ride. Some trails had gotten overgrown and what my late grandmother would call "snakey looking" so he wanted to "bush hog" it.

"I climbed on my tractor. The battery was dead so I jumped on a golf cart with a machete,'' he said.

He stopped on a trail and began hacking at briars.

"About 10 minutes into my work, something stung me on my leg,'' he said.

It hurt badly, like a hornet had nailed him, and it drew blood. Seeing nothing flying, he was going to keep cutting but felt another sting and then a third higher on his leg. It had all happened in about 15 seconds, and the last one was gushing blood.

That's when Waller saw the 6-foot diamondback rattler.

"I was enraged. I tried to hit him with that machete. But the poison had taken effect and, when I drew back, it went flying,'' he said.

His throat started closing, he had tunnel vision and he was losing his balance. With blood squirting from a punctured artery, he drove home and his wife, Kathy, drove him to Satilla Regional Medical Center in Waycross. There, they gave him antihistamines immediately to counter the swelling in his throat, administered antivenin and sent him to the trauma center at Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah.

"They had three doctors waiting for me,'' and within 15 minutes had him in ICU.

At one point his blood pressure was 190/230, and he stayed in the hospital a week. That time.

"They sent me home, but I started bleeding again and I had to go back, take another round of antivenin and spend another week,'' he said.

Waller returned to the hospital recently for some expected bad news.

"They were going to do biopsies to see how much of my leg they'd have to remove,'' he said.

It turned out the leg was healing without any tissue dying.

"The doctors were amazed,'' and that's why Waller says unabashedly he's the beneficiary of great medical care and a miracle from God.

Now, he has mixed feelings over his failure to kill the snake. He was justifiably angry at being bitten and also instantly worried that a big rattler was close to the house where his two young granddaughters, Kyler and Claire Miller, live.

But he's also glad the snake got away.

"He was just defending himself,'' Waller said. "I have all ideas I hit him with that machete before he bit me."

And, he said, they're a part of nature and here for a reason.

Not that he's taking any chances. Out of school with strep throat, Claire, 5, spent Wednesday with him.

"We just went around and put two big boxes of mothballs around her house," he said. "I hear snakes don't like mothballs."
Machete, fangs and a miracle

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