Needed to pull out kryptonite, our western diamondback rattlesnake yesterday for an educational program so first I had to remove our timber rattlesnake because he has a very strong feeding response and immediately moved to the front of the enclosure. Kryptonite is so named because I needed 24 vials of antivenom years ago after he bit my left index finger. That was a smooth $250,000 hospital bill, it wasn't really all that painful but the swelling did stretch down my arm to my chest and back. I really was only in danger of losing my finger realistically, but rattlesnake bites are extremely costly because antivenom is very expensive. While $250,000 might sound expensive, it was nothing compared to my beautiful wife
@themrswildhanbury , whose bill from her rattlesnake bite was $750,000 after staying 10 days in the hospital and receiving 59 vials of antivenom! She had 35lbs of swelling in her leg and it took a year for her to get back to squatting like she had before! Kryptonite was not my first rattlesnake bite, my first was in 2006 by a mottled rock rattlesnake on the same finger. It was not too bad, it took around 3 hours to get to the hospital from where we were hiking and by then I only had a fat hand and wrist and it was not very painful so I declined antivenom knowing I would likely get bitten in the future and have worse symptoms. Many people are under the delusion that you become more resistant to venom the more times you are bitten, and although there have been a few who did, 99% of the population will actually become more sensitive every bite and more sensitive to the antivenom as well. I have a friend who has been bitten by enough rattlesnake over the last 40 years of keeping several hundred of them that if he is bitten again, the antivenom would kill him. I guess the point of this post is that everyone assumes that since I keep cobras that they are super dangerous, but the most dangerous animal in my collection is a native species. Cobras have nothing on rattlesnakes when it comes to strike range striking speed and accuracy.
🎶 dark place by Micah Ariss 🎶
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