by Richard "Bugman" Fagerlund
Daily Lobo Columnist
Warm weather is approaching and it will soon be time to go hiking, camping and generally enjoying the outdoors.
One of the so-called hazards of living in New Mexico is that we have at least nine species of rattlesnakes that live in the areas where we like to hike and camp. As many times as I have hiked in New Mexico in the last 25 years, I have only seen a handful of these generally secretive snakes. Not that I haven't encountered them. Years ago, before I got into bugs, I was interested in snakes and used to seek them out and if you know how to look for them, they aren't hard to find.
While enjoying my hobby of catching rattlesnakes, I have managed to get bitten nine times.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
One bite in particular wasn't much fun. I was feeding a copperhead with a cold, dead mouse that I was holding between my fingers. The snake struck at the warmth of my fingers and nailed me instead of the dead mouse. Well, everyone knows copperheads aren't deadly, so I did what came naturally, I opened up and killed a bottle of scotch and went to bed. The next morning, my whole left side from my shoulder to my foot was extremely swollen. I decided I should probably go to a hospital. When I got there, the first thing they wanted to do was cut me open to relieve the pressure. I insisted on an ice pack on the swollen arm, which they did. They also injected me with antivenin. It goes downhill from here.
They checked my blood pressure every hour and at one point it had dropped, so the nurse said my kidneys must have been failing, as I hadn't urinated in a day or so. I suggested a six-pack, but she opted for a catheter. To any man, there is nothing as frightening as a catheter in the hands of a near-sighted young woman who obviously would have trouble threading a needle. She also said it wouldn't hurt after it was installed. She lied. After Nurse Crachet finished threading my needle, I was laying on my back screaming in agony.
Finally, for the sake of the other folks on my floor, they loaded me up with Demerol to shut me up.
Not all snakebites are as traumatic as the copperhead bite. Before I moved to New Mexico more than 25 years ago, my wife and I lived in Houston, Texas. We kept a lot of snakes around the house. One day I was sitting on my couch smoking a joint and my wife was handling a small garter snake. When the doorbell rang, she thought it was a friend of hers and she went to the door. Rather than putting the snake in its cage, she slipped it into her shirt. She wasn't wearing a bra. Just as she opened the door, the movement of her arm caused the snake to react and it bit her on the nipple. My wife screamed, ripped off her shirt and started jumping up and down with a snake attached to her breast. The two folks at the door were Jehovah Witnesses. They dropped their tracts and ran screaming down the sidewalk. They probably thought they saw a "devil-woman" that breast feeds snakes. I was laughing so hard I almost got sick.
I finally pried the little snake off my wife's nipple and put it back in its cage. My wife was upset for an hour or so, but she quickly realized how funny the whole scene was.
My wife and I told that story many times over the years and it never gets old.
She was killed by a drunk driver 11 years ago, but she was an amazing and tolerant woman who loved all animals as I do.
Interestingly enough most snakebite victims are young, white males, usually under the influence. I fit that profile in every bite I received. I haven't had a drink in 17 years now, and miraculously, I haven't been bitten in 17 years and I still occasionally handle rattlesnakes. I usually pick them up off a road so a car won't hit them.
I still get bitten a lot, but not by snakes. I freely handle centipedes and they almost always bite me, but their bite is not particularly painful, at least to me. I have also been nailed by scorpions, black widows and other spiders, bees, wasps, hornet, ants and just about everything else that bites or stings.
When you go hiking or camping this summer, you won't have any problems with snakes if you use common sense. Watch where you walk and don't put your hands anywhere you can't see. Don't grab rattlesnakes by the tail. I only mention that because I have, with predictable results.
