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Boy, 4, bitten in foot by snake
By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer Jack Rice is only 4, but he'll have a story to tell for a lifetime. Jack was dashing barefoot across his grandfather's lawn Wednesday when he was bitten twice by a pygmy rattlesnake -- a snake whose bite can be fatal.
"Think of Dennis the Menace, that's how everyone describes him," his mother, Tonia, said Thursday. "It's hard to keep shoes on him." Jack's uncle, also named Jack, killed the snake by whacking it with a walking stick. An ambulance took the boy to the hospital, where he received a shot of antivenin less than an hour after the bite. His foot swelled some, but by Thursday the swelling was visibly less, his mother said. "He was just running on the lawn, he never saw the snake," she said. "It bit him once, and he looked down, and it bit him again, but only one fang went in the second time." Jack became an instant celebrity at the hospital as television cameras showed up to record his story, his mother said. "He's loving it," she said. "He's a big ham. I told him just because you're a star, you still have to clean your room." Hospital marketing director Liz Nolan said several people come to the hospital each month concerned about bites, but only three or four a year turn out to be venomous snake bites where venom was injected. Pasco County Fire Rescue Chief Chris Allend said the first team on the scene was an advanced life support unit from the San Antonio station that included a paramedic. Allend said it's standard practice to bring along a captured or dead snake or spider suspected of inflicting a bite. It speeds diagnosis, he said. "We don't run a lot of snake bites, to be honest," Allend said. According to the Florida Museum of Natural History, the pygmy rattlesnake is a short, thick snake found throughout the state. The bite can be fatal but usually results in swelling and pain. A Stetson University report on the snakes notes they have very small rattles and use them only about 10 percent of the time before striking. The rattle is so faint the snakes are sometimes called buzzworms, according to the study. The university also reported four people have been bitten in the garden sections of discount stores, apparently after the snakes crawled into potted plants. Rattlesnakes aren't the only venomous snakes in Florida; cottonmouths and coral snakes roam the brush as well. In 1998, a 7-year-old Brooksville boy was critically injured when he was bitten by a coral snake. The venom paralyzed him and stopped his breathing. He was hospitalized for three weeks. For Jack, being bitten is no guarantee he'll be wearing shoes. He doesn't seem fazed by the incident, although his mother said it gave her and Jack's father, William, a scare. "I guess Jack just has something else in common with his grandfather now," she said. "He was also bitten by a rattlesnake when he was young."
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From today's Pasco Times Letters |
