OT-Snakebit

My sis-in-law called me today to come down to her back yard and help her kill a copperhead. I grabbed my Ruger Mark III and a shovel---didn't know what kind of war I'd be fighting. Got there and found she had the snake pinned to the ground with the butt end of a fishing pole. This thing was a baby---maybe ten inches long and no place on his body bigger than a pencil. The way SIL was acting you'd have thought it was the size of a fire hose.

I killed the thing, and then she allowed as to how it may have bitten her little dog, a dachshund, but she wasn't sure. Well, it wasn't long before she was sure----that dog's head swelled up big as a cantaloupe. She rushed him to the vet and he's okay now, but I was amazed at how potent that little snake was.

Jerry even a little copperhead can kill you. They have just about as much venom as a full size one.

10-15 years ago. In Southern Ohio there is a private camp grounds and lake called Long's Retreat. On one of the beaches early in the spring a little boy came up to his mother complaining about the fishing worms bitting him. He had picked up a nest of baby copperhead snakes. I don't remember how he was from the bites but I think he may have died. I am not sure of that.

I've always heard that the bite from a baby copperhead is more potent than an adult.

I forgot to mention (or photograph)the cottonmouth my daughter killed just a couple of hundred yards up the road last week. Nearly three feet long. Now there's one that could create a world of hurt.

JD, since you have weighed in it gives me the opportunity to ask something I've wondered about a lot. How did you guys in Vietnam keep from getting snakebit every day (and night) over there. They have some really bad-azz snakes in SE Asia and I know there were lots of times you special forces types, and regular infantry soldiers too, were on your belly in the jungle. probably thinking more about Mr. Charlie than about Mr. Slim Noshoulders. Woulda been a hard choice for me.

A friend of mine had a face-to-face encounter with about a 20-foot cobra over there one night; snake was standing about 5-feet high in the center of the trail to the latrine, barely visible in the moonlight. Friend turned around, didn't go to latrine. Didn't need to.

Jerry S,

So is the snake thing a regular occurrence and year round? Or is it fairly rare?

I have always thought I'd love to visit the south. But the things you guys post about snakes,lizards, etc., make me think I'll just enjoy it from afar via photos.

I read in our Monthly Conservationist magazine the small one's venom is the same potency as the adults.

I killed a big rattler on New Years Day one time.

When my son was in Thailand ,jungle training with Thai Marines. The Thai troops came out with a big basket. They beat on it with sticks . It was full of Cobras. They got em all riled up,then showed my son how to grab one. They told him hospital was 45 min away by chopper. Snake would kill him in 35. Well he was the first one out of his unit to grab one! got a pic round here of him holding up high as he could ,still had couple foot of snake on the ground . The Thai troops showed them how they cut head off , drink blood, eat snake . They saved some of the blood to mix with some wicked homemade rum they had.

Read an article on the internet last week. Seems a farmer in India was planting his rice paddy and was bitten by a cobra. Made the farmer mad and he got revenge my biting the cobra until it died. YUCK! True story.

Apparently with juvenile venomous snakes, or possibly specific to species its not the potency, its the quantity. The young ones don't have the muscle control ability yet to regulate how much venom is injected, adults are alleged to have more control. The plausible part is that the potency is likely the same, its just the quantity. There is a lot to read on this, variables, species etc, not a blanket statement for all.

I read that a juvenile eastern diamondback rattler, can only deliver about 70mg of venom, an adult can deliver 500-600+ mg, 100mg is considered fatal to a human. So there is a lot more to this.

Apparently or in theory or what have you, a neonate snake (infant) striking in defense, is quickly, and hard, emptying all of its venom because it is defending itself and lack of muscle control.

Also read that the adults having experience, control the venom quantity, besides defense, they need venom to kill prey and eat, somehow know better than to put all their eggs in one basket.

Again, a lot to read up on this, interesting, but the bottom line is to protect ones self and avoid these creatures, you can look up some really graphic images depicting necrosis and unbelievable swelling with relief cuts, venom is a really nasty substance to keep out of ones body at any cost.

JerryS, While in Viet Nam I watched every step I took after we med-evaced a South Viet Nam soldier. He got hit by a krait, which was also known as a 'step and a half snake' because supposedly that's about as far one got after getting bit by the krait. I remember the SVN soldier laying on a stretcher crying because he was sure he was going to die. I don't know if he survived or not but they flew him to Tan Son Nhut, where the biggest and best hospital was located.

Lets not go there as i really hate snakes and i had shell we say a vary close encounter with a Cobra while trying to sleep in the bush . It is a wonder i did not shoot myself with my weapon while beating it to death with the but of the Ak 47 that i carried . Yea i feared the snakes more then Charlie , he was a bigger target.Had one stand up in ft. of me one day while i was on point i froze and stood frozen my buddy that was behind me came up from behind a and shot it . I do not like snakes and to this day when it warms up in the spring i am never with out my 22 mag and the first three rounds are snake shot.

Sweetfeet, come on down! Just don't come in the summer (because of heat and humidity, not snakes.)

Here you learn to just use common sense and keep your eyes open, but it's not a really conscious thing. Snakes try to avoid us as we try to avoid them, and it works out pretty well. In my 71 years I have never seen a rattler in the wild, even dead in the road, but they are here. The cottonmouth my daughter killed last week was the first I'd seen in 20 years or so. Many years ago I'd occasionally come across a coral snake, but haven't even heard of one in a long time.

Copperheads are much more plentiful, and we see four or five a year on our 12 acres. I have known only one person who was bitten by one, though most of my dogs have been tagged at least once. They usually act like it's no big deal, though they do swell.

Nancy, whose place is about 50 miles northwest of mine, might tell you a different story, but I'm sure she'd also encourage you to come see the south.

man in waller tx. bit by copperhead 2 weeks ago die"d in son"s arms before ambulance could get there

All of a sudden the oppressive winters and killer blizzards of Northern Wisconsin are looking pretty good and as a bonus the summers are usually mild. Don't have much in the way of venomous snakes up here, just timber rattlers, yep starting to remember why we choose to live up here among the pine trees and pay the high taxes. We had an incident when I was stationed in Greece a snake got into our Maintenance and Inspection building (M&I), the other Lt was from Maine and hates snakes even more than I. He takes a big rubber mallet and clobbers the snake over the head, grabs the dead snake with a pair of tongs stuffs in in a ziploc bag, jumps in a truck and runs off to the medic to I.D. the snake and verify if it was poisonous. The medic is looking at the snake and is unable to verify if it was venomous, seems the key ID feature between the poisonous and non poisonous snake is the poisonous one has a flatter head.

Jerry S,

Maybe... in this lifetime I will get there. I'm the one with travelin' shoes - my other half, not so much.

Whoa. He's got a lot more guts than I. I wouldn't have done it.

Jerry: You got used to looking for them. Plus there where so many that you got conditioned to being used to them. We also had some stuff the South Vietnamese Commandos put on the kind of repelled them most of the time. Snake apparently have good sense of smell. This stuff was supposed to help keep them away.