Bitten, Scratched, and Banged Up: The Closest I've Come To Dying

     While many people I have met are completely convinced that at some point in my life I must have walked under a latter while breaking mirrors with my open umbrella in doors, tipped over a salt shaker on Friday the 13^th, or tread on a Native American’s pet dog’s burial ground, the truth is that throughout my entire life, I have remained extremely lucky when dealing with animals. Though I have suffered from countless bites, scratches, and assorted injuries, I have been fortunate enough to have never been stamped “cancelled”, let alone seriously injured. I’ve been hospitalized by a venomous snake, I’ve been submerged chest deep in alligator infested water, vaccinated by a brown recluse, and have been stabbed, bitten, and poisoned by countless other animals. And through it all, I’ve never come closer to death than the horse-back riding incident I’ve chosen to recount in this article. Though this piece does not actually include an animal “attack”, this was perhaps the only animal related incident I have experienced where I was literally within inches of death. Here’s how I remember every terrifying minute of it…

     It wasn’t cold, it was freezing. Winter was setting in and the temperature was dropping nearly as fast as the sun, which was now barely visible over the horizon, heavily obscured by the thick tree line directly behind the house. Sporting a pair of jeans and thick denim jacket, I stood on the front porch, arms crossed in my best Robert Redford impression. I had been suffering from a lot of anxiety related stress lately and I figured that perhaps the best thing to calm my rattled nerves would be a long horse-back ride. While never the type to don a Stetson, I had always enjoyed the cowboy vibe I got from riding horses. Growing up on John Wayne movies makes this inevitable, I suppose. The ground continued to swallow the sun, as if it were sinking in quick sand. The orange and gold lights that had filled the sky faded to a dull blue grey, and then plain grey. I had been waiting a while now as several of my siblings had each taken turns riding Penny, our five-year old quarter horse. We had only gotten her last Christmas, the year it snowed a solid six inches, and we were all keen to practice our riding skills.

     At last, one of my sisters walked her up to the porch and tied her off, wrapping one of the reigns around the top rail. I walked stiffly down the steps and around the horse, breathing deeply and rubbing my head as I tried hard to forget about the anxieties I had been battling for so long. I slid my left foot through the stirrup while grabbing ahold of the saddle horn. “Why does it have to be the left side of the horse when mounting?” I wondered to myself. “Who made that rule? And why does everyone obey it?”. “Was it the same guy who said women under the age of twenty-one shouldn’t cross their legs during dinner?”. “Does it bother the horse if I mount on the right side, and do horses even know the difference between right and left?” I thought, as I eased up and swung my right leg over the saddle. It took me a second to find the other stirrup with my boot. John Wayne had always made it look so easy. Taking both reigns in one hand, I began walking the horse out towards the three-hundred foot, gravel driveway. If I thought it was cold before, being elevated on horse-back, completely exposed to the chilling wind certainly didn’t do much to change my mind. It didn’t matter though because my mind was being occupied by nature, which was the entire point. We kept walking.

     Reaching the end of the driveway, I turned her off onto the grassy path that followed the gravel road nearly a quarter mile before reaching the asphalt paved public road. There were pastures occupied by cattle on each side, allowing for ten feet or so of grass between the pasture’s fence lines and the white gravel road. Continuing to walk her in the same direction, the fence along my left angled off at ninety degrees, just before we reached the first of three trailer houses that aligned the remaining road. This provided one with a little extra riding area, though I was careful to avoid veering off into someone’s yard. Forget whatever notions you may have concerning country hospitality. The people living in my neck of the woods are just as likely to call the police on you as say hello, assuming they don’t shoot you first. Keep in mind that this is the South, where water is only drunk after five o’clock and there are more shotguns than pretty women. I stayed very close to the road.

     Reaching the end of the road, I turned Penny around and stared back towards my house, which I could now barely make out through the imposing darkness. I don’t remember what caused me to decide on my next course of action. Perhaps I wanted an adrenaline rush. But more than likely, I had just always wanted to try this and now was as good a time as any. You see, I had never galloped a horse before. I had walked one, cantered, trotted, and even loped on a horse, but never once had I ridden one at full gallop. Crossing over to the left side of the road, which would have been the right side across the road from me on the way up, I took a deep breath. Before I even knew it, I quickly tapped the horse’s flanks with my boot heels and yelled “ha!” just the way Robert Redford would have done it. Penny exploded. She started off fast, much faster than I had anticipated and with each pounding step she quickened the pace. Within five seconds we must have been totaling forty miles per hour. Just as we were nearing the last house on the way back, my right foot slipped from the stirrup. Terror struck and panic began to swell up inside me as I flailed my foot around trying to find the lost stirrup, all the while, the horse began racing off course, veering across the road straight through a neighbor’s yard. Holding on to the saddle horn with my left, I grabbed ahold of the stirrup with my right and managed to slide it back over my foot. To this day, I am still unsure whether or not that saved my life or nearly ended it. Though my feet were now both in their propper place, we were still racing wildly off course. I thought for sure we would crash into the pasture fence. We never made it that far.
 

     The moment I secured the stirrup, I raised my body back to its vertical position and looked forward. I will never forget what happened next. There was what sounded like a sonic crack in both ears as the whole world before me flashed into a bright yellow wall. I had just galloped my horse forty miles per hour into a trio of parallel guidelines anchoring a telephone pole into the neighbor’s yard. For the next second, though it actually seemed like three or four, I felt the strangest sensation: no sensation at all. I felt nothing. I heard nothing. I saw nothing but blackness as the yellow flash disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Looking back on this moment, I do believe I might very well have been unconscious. The next thirty seconds however, woke me up in a hurry and remain the scariest moment of my life to date. I hit the ground chest first at forty miles per hour, my right foot still caught in the stirrup. I vividly remember actually bouncing off the ground like a tennis ball upon impact. The horse screamed exactly as they do in ancient battle movies just before they die, actually flipping in a complete circle through the air over me, while my foot was still caught in the stirrup. Because I hit the ground chest first with one foot in the stirrup, and the horse landed further from the wires than I did, this means that she actually twisted through the air about two feet over my body and landed about twelve inches away from my head. Strangely, as I recovered consciousness upon impact, I was actually unaware of how serious the situation was. Noticing a strange powdery substance in my mouth, I pulled myself up on hands and knees and looked forward to see Penny flailing on her back, covered in blood. I tried to stand. With one step I fell back down in agonizing pain, hitting the ground next to Penny, who had managed by this point to roll over. She stood and staggered, taking three steps in my direction, then collapsed. I was lying prone, nearly unable to move. She stood again, taking several more steps towards me, and collapsed again. I realized that she was about to walk right over me and I began clawing at the dirt, desperately trying to move out of her way. But I couldn’t. She stood back up and stepped right over me, her legs wobbling uncontrollably as if she were a new born foal. Her hoof brushed my face as I rolled over to avoid being stepped on. She staggered, and I began screaming for help as I relentlessly fought to stay out from under her. I looked towards the nearest trailer as I screamed “Is anyone there!? Help me!” But no one emerged. As Penny continued to stagger forward, I managed to roll out from under her and after several additional seconds, she had stabilized somewhat and I had managed to sit up. Suddenly I heard voices screaming my name, each one louder than the one before. Thank the Lord, my sister had been sitting on the porch swing and had heard the crash of the guidelines and the wailing of the horse! Somehow my brother made it there too, the both of them running on foot as fast as they could. Showing enough good sense to reserve all questions for after the tour, they helped me up to my feet. Completely unable to walk, they helped me up over the saddle, where I laid horizontally the entire way back.
 

     Sprawled out across the couch, there was very little I could do. Though the pain in my chest was severe and the entire length of my rib cage had begun turning a lovely black and blue, I concluded that nothing crucial was broken or ruptured. I was not coughing blood and no bones appeared to be cleanly broken. I had severely chipped two or three teeth though, which is what had caused the powdery sensation in my mouth. I knew that Penny was likely in more trouble than I was. After all, that wasn’t my blood I had seen. As it turns out, she had her neck cleanly punctured within an inch of her carotid artery. The cavity in her neck was filled with blood and there was a hole in the side of her neck as perfectly round as if she had been attacked by a giant hole-punch. I have looked over the area of the crash multiple times since the incident but have never found any object that could have made an injury like that. To this day I have no idea what punctured her neck. Luckily, we both survived the incident and are, even to this day, quite healthy. Interestingly, Penny now only grows white hair in the location of the healed neck wound. Even more interesting though are the questions raised and answered after a thorough inspection of the crash site.

     As it turns out, the bright yellow flash was a wide, plastic yellow lining on the top two wires. It seemed to be right in front of my face at the time of the flash. However, if the wires had hit me directly in the face it more than likely would have killed me as well as knocked me directly backwards rather than forwards over the wire, where I actually landed. Perhaps I had gone just under the top wires but had caught the bottom one. Maybe the horse’s legs had caught the bottom strand and her neck had caught the top two. Perhaps the top strands had caught the saddle horn, still flashing yellow in front of me as we were flipped over them. Who knows? The ground surrounding the guidelines was covered in a very thick layer of soft dirt, which more than likely saved my life. Had it been gravel or even hard earth, I would very likely have suffered from broken ribs and possibly even ruptured or punctured organs. What I find most interesting about the entire incident though, was the way my foot was caught in the stirrup. This had directly controlled the manner in which I landed. I had hit the ground on the left side of my chest while being swung by my trapped leg in a downward, diagonal arch going left to right. Had I failed to find the stirrup the instant before the crash, there is no guarantee that I wouldn’t have landed on my head and broken my neck. Perhaps it even kept me from landing underneath the horse, which would also surely have killed me. The little details, it seems, are always the most important.

          Looking back on the incident, it’s hard to find anything I did right. I was an emotionally taxed, un-experienced rider trying to gallop a horse for the first time in my life, at night. Does the situation really warrant further investigation? I clearly made one mistake after another and they very nearly proved to be my last. One positive outcome did come from that experience though. I completely forgot about my anxiety for the next few days! Perhaps there is a market in this…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bitten, Scratched, and Banged Up: Why These Things Happen To Us (but mostly to me)

     For this piece, I have decided to include several different incidents that happened over the course of several years. While the following incidents may not be worthy of inclusion on Untamed and Uncut, they were certainly of great importance to me, especially during the moments at which they occurred! Part of this article will be dedicated to the explanation of a point which I have always felt to be extremely important from the perspective of a wildlife educator and that is the simple fact that animal attacks or altercations with people never happen out of context. By this I mean that under any circumstance in which an individual finds themselves being hurt, injured, or killed by any type of animal, there are or were a specific set of circumstances in place that made it possible and likely to happen. While sometimes these circumstances are nearly unavoidable, they are always set in place by our actions. It must be understood that animals have one specific life goal, and it's not to win the lottery, compete in the Olympics, or appear on reality TV. Animals are all specifically and specially designed to survive and pass their genes on to the next generation of their species. Altercations with human beings are, for the most part, not part of their plan for fulfilling that goal. These instances only occur when we violate the rules for other specie’s completion of this purpose, such as the defensive bite of the copperhead I recounted in the last episode, or when the incidents actually serve as the completion of this purpose, such as the many crocodile attacks that occur every year in Africa. The former case demonstrated an animal defending itself from what it perceived to be a predator, whereas the latter demonstrates an animal executing its predatory instincts upon what it considered as just another prey animal. In each circumstance, a mistake was made on the human end that allowed the attack to occur. It is therefore important to remember that animals are never at “fault” for an attack on humans. The word “fault”, by its very definition, implies an agreed upon code of morality, one that animals are simply not subject to. There is no right or wrong within the animal kingdom, simply survival and the alternative. All animal behaviors are direct results of this dynamic. What follows are specific examples of how I managed, at one time or another, to upset the balance and pay the price in spades!

 

Polly Wants A Cracker… Or A Finger!

     Standing outside on my front porch, I could see the usual line of cars parked at the end of my long gravel driveway, each waiting as the minutes on their clocks ticked closer towards nine-thirty. Today was BLAST day, the bi-weekly class for my family’s private run science co-op. The focus of the semester was zoology and today was bird day. One by one, each car pulled through the circular driveway, dropping off our students. With the living room being fully converted into a classroom, everyone had a seat on the floor, anticipating the morning assembly that is taught by yours truly. With a childish grin on my face, I eagerly anticipated the day’s events. We had arranged for the parent of one of our students to bring two tropical birds for a demonstration that would serve as a fantastic visual as I introduced the kids to the amazing avian class. Mentally reminding myself not to rush through the topic introduction, I laid the groundwork for the day’s classes. “Tell her to bring them in now” I said looking to my sister and co-teacher, motioning towards the door with my chin. “Alright guys, just like the last two weeks, we have a live animal for you to see up close. Raise our hand if you can remember our rules we follow when we have an animal in class”. Hands shot up as each and every child immediately adjusted themselves to the “crisscrossed applesauce, hands in your lap” position and silenced themselves, already knowing what our animal handling rules are. Choosing the most still and quiet students to answer my questions, as I always do, I prepared them for our special guests.

 

     You see, birds always present a unique challenge when handling them in front of a crowd. They don’t have what I like to refer to as the “compromised sense” as some animals do. By this I mean that while some animals see poorly and make up for it with excellent olfactory and hearing senses, or have a poor sense ( and in some cases, no sense) of hearing but make up for it with a strong olfactory senses and excellent sight, the simple fact is that birds excel at all three. While it is true that a bird’s olfactory system is the least developed of its sensory perceptions, to suggest that this implies a week sense of smell would be similar to concluding that Shakespeare’s early works sucked because they were less developed than Hamlet. The truth is that most birds have a better sense of smell than humans, as well as a phenomenal sense of hearing and perhaps the very best vision in the animal kingdom. In the case of animal handling within a large crowd, the combination of these three highly tuned senses triples the chance of some type of stimulus from the surrounding environment -most likely from a spectator- causing the bird to become nervous, irritable, or erratic in behavior. And while both reptiles and mammals may certainly experience similar discomfort while being handled, to this day I have never had either of the two fly away from me as a result. If that happens, you will be the first to know about it. Another interesting aspect of handling birds is the manner by which they are handled. With reptiles and mammals, you are able, in most circumstances, to secure the animal with both hands to ensure they remain safe. This also plays a pivotal role in both removing them from their carriers at the beginning of the handling session and placing them back inside their carriers when finished. If an alligator, for example, becomes upset or aggravated, it will twist and turn in your hands until given the chance to calm down or until it is placed back in the carrier. However, because you have a safe and firm cast mold –like grip on him with both hands, there is little trouble it can actually give you while doing this, assuming he is smaller than some of the dinosaurs I’ve been foolish enough to hold from time to time. The same can be said of lizards, turtles and tortoises, chinchillas, rabbits, tenrecs, and most other handling animals without feathers and beaks. If, however, an intelligent bird has cause to be upset, frightened, or feels just plain stubborn on that given day, then my friend, you are in for a terrible surprise! Because birds must be perched on your arm, wrist, or hand, and are therefore free to move around on top of it, placing one where it wishes not to be is a very difficult task indeed. In addition to making you look like an idiot in front of your students, peers, or supervisor, it has a dampening effect on the program being taught and does little to booster the “wildlife whisperer” image that you no doubt have of yourself. And sometimes they bite… really hard.

 

      Needless to say, when the birds were brought in, my excitement was well tempered, though you wouldn’t know it by looking at me, with a healthy dose of apprehension and caution. With both animal carriers now placed on the table behind me, our guest teacher introduced the birds. The first was a beautiful blue and gold macaw, which is perhaps the most common among the large, captive owned macaws. And Lord was he huge! Perched atop his owner’s forearm, he must have easily beaten three feet in length, including the tail. And as I anticipated, the large crowd began to have an immediate effect on his behavior. Luckily, the macaw merely became shy, uneasily shifting his weight back and forth, continually looking away from the crowd to his owner in the exact same manner by which a toddler shies away from an admiring stranger and turns towards his or her mother. Our guest speaker was no slouch though and anticipated the bird’s every move, calming it considerably with some salted peanuts still in the shell. As she fed the macaw one peanut at a time, the kids “oohed” and “awed” as the macaw grabbed each with its unique zygodactyl feet and perfectly shelled them in its massive, vice-like beak. About this time, some loud chirps and whistles began coming from the other carrier. Someone wanted some attention, or at the very least, some of those peanuts. “You can get the other one out” our guest teacher told me, looking at the second carrier. As I opened the carrier door, a beautiful green and gold caique stepped out onto my hand. This second bird was much smaller, a little less than half the size of the macaw. Displaying the caique (pronounced “ki-yeek”) to the class, the guest teacher and I took turns sharing information on our avian friends. Somewhere between the social hierarchy of macaws and the average body temperature of tropical birds, I realized that I still had my watch on while holding the caique, which, as the British say, simply isn’t done, old chap. Before handling any type of animal, it is basic procedure to remove all watches, bracelets, loose jewelry, and the like, to ensure that whatever animal you happen to be handling does not become entangled in them. I had left my watch on, but I wasn’t the only one who noticed. The caique noticed too and began nibbling on it with its powerful, scissor –like beak. Knowing the bird could, and probably would, bite clean through my watch band, I placed my other hand just in front of its legs, expecting it to step across to my other hand. I would then simply remove the watch and continue. At least that was the theory. The caique, however, had no such plans! As I reached my other hand up to the caique’s legs, instead of stepping over as I anticipated, it quickly reached down with its beak and grabbed onto my right index finger. At that moment, my world stopped. Here I feel it is important to note that I have, as the title of this series of articles implies, been bitten by a wide variety of animals. From the regular animals such as house cats and dogs to the not so regular animals, including, but not limited to, snakes, zebras, and alligators, I have experienced more than most in the form of an animal’s teeth clamping down on my sweet young body. I can say, however, without any hesitation or second thought that in terms of sheer bite force, none of them hurt as badly as that caique did. The best and most accurate way that I can think of describing the sensation of a caique clamping down on my finger is this: imagine a strong friend is trying to amputate your finger with a pair of dull bolt cutters. If you can comprehend what this might feel like, then you can understand the sense of panic that was flooding my mind as the reality sank in that I might actually lose the end of my finger to this bird and that it was about to happen in front of thirty children! Keeping a cool head as I have learned to do over the years, I remarked to the bird “Come now, that isn’t very nice”.  The kids thought that to be particularly funny, as I hoped they would. I didn’t want them to know that inside my mind, I was screaming! Using the composure one only earns through years of experience and hundreds of animal bites, I bet everything on performing the hardest action there is during an incident like this: I completely relaxed and didn’t move a muscle. Whether or not this deliberate action caused the bird to calm down, I’ll never know. What I did know, however, was that on some level it must have worked because after what felt like six months, the caique let me go. Miraculously, I wasn’t bleeding and my finger wasn’t broken. I even finished the lesson without breaking composure, if you can believe that.

 

     What went wrong? Well, several things did. For starters, it simply wasn’t an intelligent idea to handle a highly intelligent, emotional, and potentially dangerous bird in front of such a large group. Had her owner handled her, I doubt that type of incident would have ever happened. However, the caique had never seen me before that moment and her shyness and unease towards me, coupled with the anxiety of being held in front of a large group, was simply too much for her to handle. It would be the same as expecting a child to perform in a school play in front of a large audience, with kids she didn’t know, on her first day of school. Too many demands on the caique at once resulted in anxiety, which nearly resulted in yours truly missing every “y”, “u”, “h”, “j”, “n”, and “m” in this article. Not to mention the fact that I forgot to remove my watch. Had I not overlooked that simple rule, the incident would have been far less likely to occur in the manner it did. Perhaps the caique would have just attempted to fly the arm’s length back to its carrier instead of biting my finger. It was a lesson learned the hard way. Perhaps it could be chalked up to my own unique “compromised sense”. The common kind, that is.  

Tune in next time to hear how I nearly managed to kill myself and the horse under me... at the same time!

Bitten, Scratched, and Banged Up: The Copperhead Incident

     Having been bitten, scratched, bludgeoned, and mauled by a wide variety of wildlife, if there’s any one thing I can assure those of you who have the good fortune –and by this I mean “good sense”- to have avoided such one sided confrontations with nature, it is this: big or small, it provides for a most unpleasant experience. I cannot recall how many times I’ve come in second place in one of these animal altercations but I’m willing to bet that if I had a dollar for each one, I’d be listed in Forbes 400 somewhere between Warren Buffet and Donald Trump. While some people may chalk this up to a lack of caution, I do not. When you spend as much time with and around animals that can kill and, in some instances, actually eat you, as I have, you develop a great amount of caution and a good measure of respect for each and every one of them. I attribute my collection of injuries to a stipulation of Murphy’s Law which states that if you are in an environment long enough where a mistake or accident may occur, sooner or later it will occur. In fairness, Murphy’s Law has caught up with me a number of times and if I knew Mr. Murphy any better, we would probably have a weekly card game.  Despite my frequent dealings with Murph, several of my animal encounters can, in all fairness, be blamed on plain, grade –A stupidity. The following episode is one such instance.

 

     I had the terrarium prepared. The traditional ten gallon fish tank had been converted nicely for all manner of small reptiles, complete with soil, foliage, and leafy debris forming the natural interior. Like a motel, it had been the temporary home for countless guests before. Tucked safely away within a cotton sack was the next tenet, a medium sized Eastern ribbon snake I had caught less than twenty minutes before. What I didn’t have was a lid for the terrarium, which was essential to keeping a snake. Snakes are a heck of lot smarter than people give them credit for and will, if there is even the slightest opportunity provided them, escape a new enclosure. With me on that summer day of 2003 was my cousin, Chris. The two of us had been busy elsewhere until we crossed paths with the ribbon snake and decided to catch it. “Give me a second” I shouted to him from across the yard, “I know where I can get a lid!” Where there is now a blank sheet of concrete to the side of my house, just between the back corner and the side gully which runs into the creek, there was at one time a large wooden shed. Nicknamed the “chicken shed” due to its function as a chicken coop for several seasons’ worth of livestock shows, its second purpose was to hide the large amount of scrap wood that we would eventually burn –when we got around to it, of course. The scrap wood consisted of many plywood sheets and timber boards, stacked just behind the shed, out of sight. That’s where I would get my lid by custom cutting the plywood sheet to my exact specifications. Turning the corner of the shed, I examined my selections the best I could through the ankle deep leaves that had fallen and dried out that summer. Showing an extreme lack of better judgment, I had ventured over to the leaf buried wood pile barefoot, not having bothered to put on a pair of shoes. I was in a hurry and couldn’t be bothered the time it would cost me to find my set of New Balance track shoes. It would have taken two minutes from my busy schedule. It ended up taking two months instead.

 

     Lifting each board for inspection and eventual rejection, I was careful to look the ground over for snakes. Apparently, I wasn’t careful enough. In another classic blunder, I merely scanned the ground over once for each piece of wood I lifted, knowing full well in the back of my mind after so many years that a well camouflaged snake could avoid visual detection from a jeweler, if hidden in the right substrate. And I was ankle deep in the right substrate. One particular board caught my interest and I gave it a careful examination. Holding it upright the length of my body, I decided that as sure as politicians lie, I could make a lid from this board. Deciding it would be easier to chop up on the ground, I let it fall. That was the last second the board was on my mind. As it hit the ground, I was mildly alarmed to feel a sensation similar to being pinched by a crab on the right edge of my right foot, halfway between the toe and the heel. Turning in surprise to face what I thought must have been a very large crayfish or perhaps one of the blue crab that swim in from the coast having strayed too far upland from the creek, I was completely shocked to see what had so neatly punctured my foot. With a feeling of what I can only describe as surrealistic astonishment, I looked down to see a small broad banded copperhead sitting partially coiled mere inches from my bleeding foot. It’s very strange what thoughts will course through your mind in a particularly dangerous and urgent situation. “I can’t believe that snake just bit me” was the only thought that coursed through my head as I watched it slither away to the safety of the jungle thick gully, practically gliding over my foot in the process. I didn’t move. I wasn’t afraid, but rather, I was simply shocked that I had, after so many years, actually been bitten by a venomous snake. As it vanished into the thick bush, a second strange and surrealistic thought passed through my head as I stood there, still motionless: “There’s more blood than I thought there would be”. It was now streaming down my foot in three directions, bathing the brown and gold leaves beneath my feet in a bright crimson red. As I watched the flow of blood, the reality sank in that the majority of my blood was still coursing through my body, only now it was carrying dangerous hemorrhagic venom that had already began its work of breaking down my blood vessel walls and the cells of the surrounding tissues. My mind began racing. “Stay calm and walk, you know what to do. Whatever you do, don’t panic” I told myself as I began the noticeably awkward and slow walk back to the house. “The faster you move, the faster your blood flows with that venom in it, spreading it through the body” I remembered. Being insightful enough to realize that I was not miming the actions of a tight rope walker for the fun of it, my brother Nolan asked what was up. “I just got bit by a snake”, I told him. There must have been a serious look of urgency on my face or in the tone of my voice because I had been bitten by hundreds of non venomous snakes before and, though I had not specified this one was venomous, he seemed to understand as he ran inside to alert out mother. By this point my sisters were in tears, obviously mourning my nearing and unavoidable death by copperhead. Slightly more confident in my chances, knowing only four percent of all copperhead bites resulted in death and most of those being the very young or sick, I calmly informed my mother that I had been bitten by a copperhead and that if she didn’t mind, a trip to the hospital would cheer me up considerably. To this day, I’m still unsure if her near disciplinary response of “Get in the car…” was a sign of the calmness with which she was handling the situation or the result of her aggravation that her son had finally gotten himself bitten by a snake. A combination of both, I suspect.

 

     In the car, my mentality began to change and for one moment, and that moment only, I began to lose my nerve. “What if I really could die from this?” I thought. Fighting back the emotional build up of fear, I reminded myself that cool heads prevail and that if so many people I had seen on the Discovery channel could survive the truly lethal bites of taipans and black mambas, I would surely survive the bite of a copperhead. Marveling at the speed my mother could crank out of our van, I toyed with the idea of a tourniquet, eventually deciding against it. A good decision too, as that legitimately could have resulted in the amputation of my leg, causing far more damage than the snake bit itself and would have severely affected my mile time. Pulling up to the doors of the Lake Jackson hospital, an orderly was waiting outside for us with a wheel chair. By this time, several notions I had held concerning snake bites were crushed. For starters, I had always heard the tales of fangs feeling like hot hypodermic needles upon impact, followed by an immediate and intense burning sensation. I experienced neither of these. The bite itself, as I mentioned before, felt so nearly identical to the pincer of a crab that I had abandoned the obvious logical conclusion of a snake bite in favor of this idea before actually seeing the culprit with my own two eyes. The burning sensation on the site of the bite never came at all, much to my surprise and immense delight. However, if any one thing had proven true and on schedule, it was the immense amount of swelling that was caused by the hemorrhagic venom possessed by the copperhead and his pit viper counterparts. This venom specializes in destroying tissues, specifically blood vessel walls, muscle cells, blood platelets and erythrocytes. This I first noticed making the transition between the van and the wheel chair. My leg had literally begun to look, feel, and act as if I were wearing a large sock full of jell-o.   Any defining features of the metatarsals and ankle bones were now gone. As the orderly wheeled me into the emergency room I realized that it would be quite some time before I received any serious medical treatment. The emergency room was packed and I was given an IV full of antibiotic fluids. Eventually I was moved onto a stretcher and wheeled into the emergency room, which turned out to be a cubical of curtains less than ten feet from where I had been waiting. I had expected to be treated with antivenin, the ingenious antidote for snakebites that came from the venom itself. Injecting diluted samples of venom from various snakes into the bloodstreams of horses caused the experimental equestrians to develop amazingly resistant antibodies. These antibodies are extracted from blood samples and with a little work, were manufactured into antivenin. The problem with antivenin, however, is that you can’t safely administer the serum without first knowing the type and quantity of snake venom injected through the bite(s). Easily identifying the snake was no problem for me. The urine test required to identify the quantity of venom my liver had broken down and filtered through my kidneys turned out to be a little more complicated. The actual urine test procedures were not what worried me. It was getting off the stretcher and on to the wheel chair and then repeating the reverse process that worried me. My leg had literally swollen to twice its normal size and some very real discomfort had begun to set in. Carefully, and with plenty of help, I completed the urine test, unfortunately rattling my leg several times on the way there and back, eventually finding myself atop the stretcher again some fifteen minutes later. Five minutes passed before it happened. A slow, creeping pain began to take over my entire leg from my toes to my hips. It escalated sharply and became so intense that I began to make audible groans and exclamations of pain. It became sharper and more intense with every second until I was literally gripping the sides of the stretcher in tight fists, tears streaming down my face as both my mom and dad tried, as gently as they could, to hold me down on the stretcher. Within forty-five seconds the entire stretcher was shaking with me as doctors, God save their souls forever, administered a pain killer just in the nick of time. That was the last time I ever cried over physical pain and remains, to this day, the most painful sensation I have ever experienced. Calmed somewhat by the medications, I had nothing to do but sit and wait before the test results came back and I could be treated and moved to a hospital room. I watched the clock as four hours ticked by. They next time you think you are bored, may I recommend you lie on your back, on a table, and watch a clock count off four hours? I guarantee your outlook and definition of boredom will experience a complete renovation. If you are still not convinced, I recommend you try it again, only this time, be sure to inject something toxic into your leg first.

 

     Eventually, a room became available and I was moved off the stretcher and onto a bed, crossing all fingers and one set of toes, hoping the medication would hold out during this trip, which it did. One of the nurses elevated my foot with a stack of pillows, to which I immediately protested. Despite the fact that the venom had already been circulating in my blood for the better part of five hours, I wanted whatever venom was left in my leg to stay in my leg, rather than flow downward to my vitals and, err…um… very vitals. Both of my parents knowing that even at thirteen years of age I had a much higher and more practical knowledge of venomous snakes and snake bites than the nurse, the pillows were removed upon my request. Besides, telling me “no” after the incident on the stretcher might very well have left me the healthiest -and by healthiest, I mean only living soul- in the room. About this time, the test results came back. For starters, I would not require the treatment of antivenin, which was a major plus as it indicated that my bite was not as severe as it might have been. After all, by this time I had examined the bite mark. The copperhead, due to the angle and placement of the strike, had only penetrated with one fang, the other missing completely, reducing the amount of venom that would surely have been working to destroy my bodily tissues by fifty percent. While it is true in many recorded cases that younger snakes have a more toxic venom than adult specimens, this being due to the fact that the younger, smaller and more fragile snakes cannot hold onto their prey but must kill it with one swift injection, the fact that a smaller snake will inject smaller quantities of venom, added to the bonus of the my snake’s lack of accuracy, seemed to equal this out nicely. I would however, have to stay the night in the hospital. While I was not excited about this, I decided things couldn’t get much worse than they had already. Boy was I wrong! Most people who know me are aware that I have a legitimate fear of needles. What most people don’t know is that this was where it all started. Maybe that nurse was just an intern on her first day. Perhaps she was trying to convince me to re-write my latest best-selling novel the only way she knew how. But anyway, either way, if that simple IV injection was an interrogation, you can bet the alimony I would have talked! Without noticing, she had injected the IV in the right vein, but at the terribly wrong angle. What should have been a straight IV was jetting off to the side of the vein on the inside of my elbow, causing me immense discomfort, a mistake that would not be corrected until the next day. In the meantime, I tried to take my mind off of my situation by watching a little TV. Having a limited number of channels, I started watching a show on custom mechanics who designed their own super cars. It was here that I learned what a cruel sense of humor the universe can have at times. While one mechanic showed off his favorite car to the camera crew filming the show, someone asked what he called it. All kidding aside, this is what he said: “Well, I call this one ‘The Copperhead’ because you never know what’s under the hood until it’s too late!” Remember that delirious laugh Richard Dreyfus does in JAWS, when can’t believe his ears as he listens to the lunatic mayor dismiss his warnings of a killer shark? Closing my eyes and doing my best to appreciate the cruel irony, I replicated that laugh to perfection. Calling it a day (and what a day it had been!) I did my best to fall asleep. It didn’t last long however, as I was about to discover my one and only allergy: whatever type of painkiller the doctors had given me earlier that evening! Doing my best not to touch my swollen foot to the floor, I vomited uncontrollably throughout the night.

 

     Eventually, I must have exhausted the substance from my system, or perhaps I just exhausted my system, because I somehow managed to fall asleep. The next day I was severely dehydrated but with a steady intake of water, my body began to operate on normal levels again, save for the swollen leg. Eventually a close friend dropped by after having had his appendix removed and the two of us took a photo together that I still have to this day. More friends came to visit, somewhat easing the pain and misery I had experienced the day prior. Eventually, I was allowed to go home that evening. I would spend the next two months on crutches, not even being able to stand without them and it was a full two years before I built back the lost strength and stability in my ankle. While the lessons learned were broad and many, the hardest learned was that I committed what is the cardinal sin when working with wildlife: I failed to respect a dangerous animal while in its territory. Interestingly, while I have seen more Southern and Northern copperheads since that time than any ten people will see in the entirety of their lives, I have never seen another broad banded copperhead since. Why that one broad banded copperhead made an appearance on that particular day, never to be seen again remains a mystery. One thing’s for sure though: the next time I see Mr. Murphy I might have to suggest that card game to him. In fact, I know where he can find some wood to make the card table with…