"Teen steps into snake nest; bitten 6 times"

[scutechute]

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/...itten-6-times/

This article is from the San Diego UT (November 8, written by Susan Shroder)

EL CAJON — A 16-year-old El Cajon girl is recovering after being bitten six times by rattlesnakes in a rural area of Jamul while she was distracted and looking at her cellphone for a connection.


Vera Oliphant said Thursday that was visiting her uncle on Oct. 27 when she went up a hill from his house to try to get a phone connection to contact her mother.


She heard rattles just as she stepped into a pile of weeds and twigs. She looked down and saw an adult snake and five baby snakes biting her right foot.


She hobbled back down the hill to her uncle’s house, feeling stabbing pain and numbness. He drove her to Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, where she said medical staff “saved my life.”


She said she had gone into anaphylactic shock twice and lost consciousness four times during the ordeal.
At one point, she saw a “dark tunnel,” a vision described by some with near-death experiences.


“I thought I was going to die,” she said.


She was given 24 bottles of antivenin and was in intensive care until her release on Oct. 30. She’ll return next week to Chaparral High School in Santee, where she is a junior.

[Andybill]

I heard that the babies are the most dangerous because they are still learning how to envenomate their prey and so will often use a lot more venom in one single bite. That girl is lucky to be alive!

[OctagonGecko729]

Thats alot of antivenin, amazing that she survived this encounter.

[Annarose15]

Life lesson: Pay more attention to where you are placing your feet than to how many bars are on your iphone.

I'm glad she's okay, but it makes me sad that people's situational awareness is so nonexistent.

[gsarchie]

My mother was bitten by a baby western diamondback when I was six and received something like 14 vials of anitvenin, and she almost died as well. So good that this girl survived!

Also, the area where the mother gave birth to and sits with her babies before guiding them back to the den for winter would be called a rookery, not a nest!

[wilomn]

My mother was bitten by a baby western diamondback when I was six and received something like 14 vials of anitvenin, and she almost died as well. So good that this girl survived!

Also, the area where the mother gave birth to and sits with her babies before guiding them back to the den for winter would be called a rookery, not a nest!

Not so sure about the sits with and guiding part and I thought only crows rooked.

[gsarchie]

Negative. I saw this first hand with Crotalus horridus that I worked with while I was an undergrad at KU. We had some radiotagged snakes, and when the females would leave the rookeries for the den the babies would always be gone as well. Also, the rookeries were never far from the den.

[Crotalids]

I heard that the babies are the most dangerous because they are still learning how to envenomate their prey and so will often use a lot more venom in one single bite. That girl is lucky to be alive!

Slight misunderstanding.

It's not because they're learning how to envenomate their prey, they are fully capable of doing that from day one. It's the fact they're so small..They are food to birds etc when they're little, so a young venomous snake is going to inject as much venom as it possibly can into someone/something that it thinks is trying to eat/harm it.

[sorraia]

Life lesson: Pay more attention to where you are placing your feet than to how many bars are on your iphone.

I'm glad she's okay, but it makes me sad that people's situational awareness is so nonexistent.

No kidding on both counts! Speaking of nonexistant situational awareness... I can't tell you how many times people have walked by me in the field without even noticing me, while I am making NO attempt to hide myself and am just a couple feet off the trail.

[Crotalids]

Slight misunderstanding.

It's not because they're learning how to envenomate their prey, they are fully capable of doing that from day one. It's the fact they're so small..They are food to birds etc when they're little, so a young venomous snake is going to inject as much venom as it possibly can into someone/something that it thinks is trying to eat/harm it.

This is a defensive bite, an adult rattler has more control over the amount of venom it injects than a baby that's a couple of days old. But an adult is less likely to use it's full yield against someone pissing it off, as venom is expensive for them to make - they need it to incapacitate prey. For a baby, it's a matter of saving itself, and they will nail you with everything they've got.

But the notion that a baby rattler is more dangerous is not really correct. I would rather get bitten by a one day old baby atrox, than getting bitten by a big 5ft adult. The latter has a far greater chance of killing me.