Field Herping Blog

I got bitten by a juvenile timber rattlesnake in my middle finger near Gainesville, Texas. The following is my account of what happened as a result of the rattlesnake bite.

The bite did not hurt. There was a little bit of blood at the site of the bite but the bleeding was by no means severe. I hopped in my car and started driving to the hospital. For the first few minutes I was hoping that I got a dry bite, in which no venom was injected.

After about ten minutes the finger started to swell up. As time went on the swelling extended up my arm. It did not hurt too bad; it just felt kind of numb and irritated and tender.

Not too long after I arrived at the hospital my whole hand and arm were swollen up like a balloon. My hand was as thick as it is wide at one point. The swelling extended past my elbow.

The hospital started to inject me full of antivenin. I received six viles of CroFab. The antivenin worked fantastically. Within a couple hours of receiving the antivenin the swelling had decreased greatly.

I stayed in the hospital for three days (two nights) mostly as a precaution. I felt good and the swelling was way down by the next morning. However, they kept me to make sure that I didn’t have any adverse reactions to the CroFab.

I went back for a checkup about a week later and blood tests showed that my blood wasn’t clotting at all! Rattlesnake venom is hemotoxic and it thins the blood. I was forced to stay at the hospital for another couple days until they got my blood clotting at a reasonable level. They told me that it would be irresponsible for them to let me leave the hospital because if I got a head injury or something I would just bleed out and there would be nothing that they could do to help me. After vitamin K injections the doctors eventually got my blood to a reasonable level and I was allowed to leave the hospital.

There was no long term damage to my finger and my blood is now normal.

I guess this just goes to show you that you should handle venomous snakes with a snake hook instead of trying to be the badass crocodile hunter type that wrangles snakes with his bare hands.

I try to make my way out to Val Verde County once or twice a year to look for some Chihuahuan Desert snakes. Here are some photos of some of the herps that I found this year:

Blacktail rattlesnake

Banded Rock Rattlesnake

Here are a few pictures of one of the beautiful canebrake rattlers that I found this spring night driving for snakes north of Dallas…

I went night driving last night at a spot that has timber rattlesnakes north of Dallas. No timber rattlers, unfortunately, but I did see a few other snakes:

1 Texas Rat Snake

1 Huge Great Plains Rat Snake

1 Texas Brown Snake

Also saw a bunch of mammals (armadillos, deer, raccoons). Hopefully next time I will get my Canebrake.

The Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) National Grasslands are located about an hour northwest of Fort Worth, Texas near the town of Decatur. I dropped by there after work one day this week for a tiny bit of herping.

I flipped some artificial cover and didn’t turn up anything. I then proceeded to some rocky hills that I like to herp to see if I could turn up anything. Flipping rocks yielded a beautiful adult copperhead, a couple flat headed snakes, some skinks and a narrowmouth toad.

Not incredibly productive but it was still fun.