I'm currently living in a state of heightened snake awarness.
Just this past weekend I was clearing some trail on our back property (very overgrown old farmland in the Saratoga area). I only had about a half hour to squeeze out some work so rather than putting on some jeans and my boots I grabbed some handtools and went at it in my shorts and Chacos. Bad idea. As I was thrashing away at some sapplings and deep grass I felt a whack and a sting on my ankle. I figured something of the pricker variety had snapped back and hit me. I turned and looked down to see what I think was a medium size copperhead making a getaway. I'm no herpatologist, but I have seen them before in the wild and I'm pretty sure that's what I saw.
My internal monolouge went something like this:
"You just got bit by a copperhead. This is new."
"That wasn't a copperhead"
"Yes it was, you've seen them before"
"This is going to hurt very, very badly"
"Yes it is. Jackass."
I whiped away some foamy, muscousy fluid from around the area to see at least one small wound underneath. I then figured I should probably vacate the area mucho pronto. I got half way to the house when my foot and lower leg went kind of numb and began to tingle and the bite area began to smart pretty good. I walked up to the yard, pretty wigged out by my anticipation of the pain to come and sat down next to my wife who was reading in a lawn chair. I asked her to look at my ankle because I was still not convinced that I had just been bitten and she confirmed I had two very slight bite marks right on my maleolus (ankle bone). But as we looked at them we discovered that they were barely scratches. He had hit me right on the bone and barely penetrated the skin at all. I think what happened is that I was barely grazed and got almost no venom. Just enough for me to have some localized throbbing and some weird tingling that persisted for about 12 hours (reducing over time from my whole foot and ankle to just the bite area). But any serious swelling and pain never developed.
Anyone know what else this could have been? They are pretty copmmon in the general area but considering how easy I got off I'm still sceptiacal that this was a copperhead, glancing blow or not. The symptoms are supposed to be pretty darnned bad no matter how you cut it. I'm just not aware of any other venemous snakes that I could have come across in that area/circumstances that would have effects similar to what I experienced.
Just this past weekend I was clearing some trail on our back property (very overgrown old farmland in the Saratoga area). I only had about a half hour to squeeze out some work so rather than putting on some jeans and my boots I grabbed some handtools and went at it in my shorts and Chacos. Bad idea. As I was thrashing away at some sapplings and deep grass I felt a whack and a sting on my ankle. I figured something of the pricker variety had snapped back and hit me. I turned and looked down to see what I think was a medium size copperhead making a getaway. I'm no herpatologist, but I have seen them before in the wild and I'm pretty sure that's what I saw.
My internal monolouge went something like this:
"You just got bit by a copperhead. This is new."
"That wasn't a copperhead"
"Yes it was, you've seen them before"
"This is going to hurt very, very badly"
"Yes it is. Jackass."
I whiped away some foamy, muscousy fluid from around the area to see at least one small wound underneath. I then figured I should probably vacate the area mucho pronto. I got half way to the house when my foot and lower leg went kind of numb and began to tingle and the bite area began to smart pretty good. I walked up to the yard, pretty wigged out by my anticipation of the pain to come and sat down next to my wife who was reading in a lawn chair. I asked her to look at my ankle because I was still not convinced that I had just been bitten and she confirmed I had two very slight bite marks right on my maleolus (ankle bone). But as we looked at them we discovered that they were barely scratches. He had hit me right on the bone and barely penetrated the skin at all. I think what happened is that I was barely grazed and got almost no venom. Just enough for me to have some localized throbbing and some weird tingling that persisted for about 12 hours (reducing over time from my whole foot and ankle to just the bite area). But any serious swelling and pain never developed.
Anyone know what else this could have been? They are pretty copmmon in the general area but considering how easy I got off I'm still sceptiacal that this was a copperhead, glancing blow or not. The symptoms are supposed to be pretty darnned bad no matter how you cut it. I'm just not aware of any other venemous snakes that I could have come across in that area/circumstances that would have effects similar to what I experienced.
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