Reply #16: Had a friend in Missouri who was bitten by one... [View All]

[punpirate]

... while out fishing. Just a baby 8-10 inches long swimming in the water near the boat. He was worried about the two boys in the boat with him, so he broke a dead branch off overhead and tried to catch it in a fork of the branch and fling it away.

As he caught it and raised the branch to heave it, he said that snake stretched out about two feet long and bit him on the end of his finger. They hightailed it back to the car, and he drove to the hospital. They got some anti-venom serum into him within about an hour and a half and he was still out of commission for weeks.

Said his entire arm up to the shoulder swelled up about twice normal size--he said it looked like a giant sausage--and the skin turned black. Four days later, the doctors were about a day away from slitting his arm in several places to relieve the pressure when the swelling finally started to go down.

I never would have known, except that I'd asked him one day what mangled the end of one of fingers so badly. That was the point where the snake had bitten him and the venom had corroded the flesh so badly that it healed abnormally.

Very aggressive snake, indeed.