Posted on 05/15/2012 11:00:40 PM PDT by nickcarraway
He thought it was a stick, but an Eastern Washington man painfully discovered it was actually a rattlesnake in the gardening aisle of the Wal-Mart in Clarkston when it bit his hand.
Mica Craig said he was looking for mulch for his medical marijuana growing operation when he reached down. Suddenly, the snake latched on to his hand and wouldn't let go.
"It's the most scared I've ever been in my life. When I shook it and heard the rattles, I knew it was a rattlesnake and then I freaked. I was screaming bloody murder through the parking lot," he told Dori in an interview from his hospital bed in Lewiston, Idaho.
Craig says he stomped the snake to death and then began to worry about the venom coursing through his hand.
Luckily, a woman who saw the bite acted fast.
"She grabbed me and threw me in my car and headed me to urgent care, which was right across the street, but they don't take snake bite victims."
The ordeal continued after getting diverted to the emergency room. His hand hadn't swelled because he iced the bite wound, so doctors told him not to worry about it and sent him home. Soon after, his hand swelled up "the size of a grapefruit."
After returning to the hospital, he was rushed to treatment, where doctors administered anti-venom and cut open his hand to relieve the swelling.
"As of right now, my little finger doesn't move at all and my ring finger barely moves. I'm hoping it's just swelling."
But Craig told Dori he is worried about long term damage.
"I'm just hoping that my hand works."
Back in college we were working in the desert and got a truck stuck in a wash. As we went to find sticks to shove under the tires in the loose sand my last comment was “Don’t pick up a rattler thinking it’s a stick!”
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I turned from the truck and saw a good-sized stick 20 feet away. After a few more steps I realized it was a rattler laid out in the sun! (But agreed - I figured it out before I tried to pick it up).
Every once in awhile you’ll read about a rattlesnake in Western Washington. Usually in association with a farm that just got a truckload of hay delivered from Eastern Washington!
Most recommend 6 hr observation of bite victim before the all clear is given. Some delayed reactions occur.
THe Snake Doctor
I treated 5 snake bites the summer after the TN flood in a two month period. We usually only see about one every other year.
There 's a song in there somewhere...
The lawsuit money should keep him in some high end weed for quite a while.
Well, he probably didn't know the difference between a snake and a hoe handle ... this explains why he wasn't worried about trying to pick up a rattlesnake. /s
--Lewis Carroll
Meanwhile, Mom had gotten a garden hoe, pulled the snake out of the crack and cut its head off.
The other story was from yesterday. My daughter and her friend (11 years old) were playing in the back yard and I was in the garage. I heard screaming, but thought it was just the girls being girls. Until I heard SNAKE!!! I came out of the garage to find my daughter up on the treehouse about to cry and her friend telling her the snake wasn't poisonous.
Sure enough, it was a black snake, about 5 feet long. We watched him slither along the privacy fence, slip under it and disappear. A few minutes later my daughter tells me the snake was trying to get into one of the foundation vents on the house.
I normally wouldn't have killed the snake, as they eat rats and such. But I can't have it under the house. So I got Mom's weapon of choice, the garden hoe, and took care of it.
Thanks. I knew some bites are characterized as “dry” but not as high as a quarter of them. Talk about “bite roulette”.
I watched all of the episodes on the Animal Planet of the Snake Doctor in Loma Linda, California. It was a very informative series. Glad to know that there are “specialists” like this. Are you an ER doc?
Yes, here in Alabama, the snakes come out, or are washed out, in heavy rain periods. I’m amazed there are so few bites when they are out in high numbers. Local TV news just showed a package last week about the high number of rattlers already slithering around in high numbers.
But 37,500 get bit per year. Your odds are good but im sure its not a fun ordeal.
Oh no, I think about that as well. I am a solo hiker and I have all kinds of useless information to most hikers and the public in general.
Some information is fairly comforting to the first responder, me, myself and I.
Hadn't thought of that, but you're probably right. Still, the mention about his marijuana growing operation was completely non sequitur to the story.
I think it was included to explain how somebody could mistake a rattlesnake for a stick — then some PC editor trimmed it to eliminate the implication that there is anything wrong with growing marijuana. What was left was the seeming non-sequitur.
Precisely. Thanks for putting words to my exact thoughts.
I had forgotten how different is Western Washington than us here around Seattle. It is just too freaking cold and rainy here for rattlers to thrive.
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