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(No, I have not, thank goodness, but this boy did)

Boy, 7, recovering after Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake bites him in his backyard in Jackson County

Monday, August 23, 2010, 11:45 AM

Unlike other family members, 7-year-old Logan Coleman doesn’t have an aversion to snakes.

Clutching a handful of the plastic toy reptiles, he says his favorite is the venomous African black mamba.

He likes rattlesnakes, too, he said. Except for the one that bit him Wednesday in his Spring Arbor Township backyard in a rare encounter with Michigan’s only venomous snake.

“Logan screamed and said, ‘Mom, you have to come see what bit me,’ ” his mother, Kimberly Coleman, recalled Friday while standing near the family’s swing set where they found the snake coiled in the grass.

Logan and his 4-year-old sister, Natalie, were raking leaves in the backyard Wednesday afternoon when Logan said he saw a “funny looking leaf.” Curious, he bent down to touch it.

Lying well camouflaged among the leaves and grass in the yard, the snake — later identified as an Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake — bit Logan’s left thumb when he touched its head.

It didn’t take long for his thumb to swell and become stiff.

“I couldn’t even move it an inch,” Logan said, holding out his thumb, still bruised and puffy two days later and his arm marked by dark lines emergency personnel used to monitor the swelling.

Fearful of snakes, Kim Coleman called her husband, Bryan, and a neighbor who told her to take Logan to the hospital after he saw the reptile. The neighbor managed to wrangle the snake into a container to take to the hospital so it could be identified, Coleman said.

The snake was still alive when it was brought into the Allegiance Health emergency room, where staff were able to confirm it was an Eastern Massasauga, hospital spokesman Shannon Scholten wrote in an e-mail.

He estimated it has been more than a decade since the hospital saw a patient who had been bitten by a snake.

Logan was later taken to the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, where he was treated for the bite and released Thursday.