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Once Bitten

A rattlesnake is poised to strike the camera

Rattlesnakes don’t attack often; knowing why can help you avoid it

“Get out!” the emergency room nurse told me — not once, but twice. I was just trying to help her understand the severity of the venomous snakebite that the victim I’d just helped inside had suffered. An hour earlier, he’d been struck by a very large Timber rattlesnake while we were snake hunting in rural southern Ohio. I thought we were spending the day observing snakes and didn’t realize that my new acquaintance was actually there to capture them. The rattler tried to crawl under a log on our approach, but when the intruder grabbed him by the tail, the snake sunk both fangs and a lethal dose of toxins deep into his hand.

I was well-versed in snakebite treatment from my time spent working at a small zoo in Florida. As a community service, I conducted snakebite seminars and enlisted the aid of an expert doctor and veterinarian. It was the early 1970s, and the old idea of using tourniquets and snakebite kits had been debunked. Getting to a hospital quickly and receiving lots of antivenom was the only effective approach.

On the way to Chillicothe, Illinois, I stopped and asked a farmer to call the hospital and tell them we were on our way and in need of antivenom for a serious Timber bite. In the small examination room, the nurse said she’d heard something about a call. When I asked her about their supply of the life-saving drug, she looked in a cabinet and found one vial. I politely (perhaps a bit emphatically) suggested that it would not be near enough. I was abruptly escorted out.

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The victim experienced cardiac arrest 48 hours after being admitted. His friends took him to Columbus, Ohio, where he spent a month recovering, much of that time spent in intensive care.

In our Western culture, more people dislike or hate snakes than like them. Rattlesnakes are hated more than others. It’s not wrong to fear snakes enough to keep your distance. On average seven or eight people in Nevada are bitten by rattlesnakes yearly (compare that to 1,400 people in Texas, who are bitten by several different venomous snakes a year).

More useful than fear, though, is understanding. We all know, or at least should know by now, that snakes are an important part of the environment and help to keep populations of destructive and disease-spreading rodents in check. And fewer than 10 people die annually in the U.S. from snakebites, on average, because antivenom is readily available (though extremely expensive).

Rattlesnakes are a fixture in Nevada’s Mojave Desert. Our six species range in size from around 18 inches to four feet. The sidewinder is the smallest, and the Western diamondback is the largest. These creatures do not want to waste the valuable venom they produce on us; they’d rather save it for food procurement. A rattlesnake can actually control the amount of venom dispensed when it strikes and can bite without using any at all; good news for us. I think of rattlesnakes as being the high-end luxury end of the snake spectrum. They have all the bells and whistles. By rattling, they hope to avoid confrontation, begging to be left alone.

Rattlesnakes are sit-and-wait, or ambush predators. This is a smart tactic, as they exert very little energy while lying next to a rodent trail. Rattlesnakes don’t have direct, and potentially dangerous, combat with their prey like other snakes. A quick strike and release is all it takes to allow the venom to do its work. The snake then uses its extraordinary tongue and sensory organs to track the dead rodent for consumption.

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Rattlesnake vision is pretty good, but the heat-sensing pits found between their eyes and nostrils make them acutely aware of any warm-blooded prey that passes nearby. Even on the darkest of nights, these pit vipers strike with deadly precision.

In Nevada, the Panamint, Speckled, and Great Basin rattlesnakes are known to den communally in winter. It’s hard to imagine snakes coming from miles away to pile up together in deep rock shelters, but there is a distinct advantage to this strategy. Come spring, before they spread out, they breed, wasting little energy searching for a mate.

Last, but not least, rattlesnakes bear living young. Only about 30 percent of snakes do this. Egg-laying snakes have no control over environmental conditions that may ruin a clutch. Live birth means that rattlesnake moms will protect their newborns for a short period of time, not something you might expect from a serpent.

So, love them or hate them, that’s up to you. But you have to admit they’re fascinating, unique reptiles that provide a service to us humans and deserve to be left alone. Show them respect, and you improve the odds of them doing the same.