Nice request. I was bit by a rattlesnake once. And it appears I lived to tell you about it.
Well, lets see, it was a beautiful fall day in September sometime, 1987. Ah screw it, I can't glorify it.
Anyway, I was fly fishing along the East Fork San Gabriel river with my pops. I was 17 at the time. We were about a mile or so upstream from Camp Williams (this was before all that area was private property). As I was walking around the stream, I saw a blur out of the corner of my eye and when I looked in that direction, I saw a pretty decent size diamond back, maybe 4 feet long or so, and pretty thick. I mean this was a healthy sucker.
So, in all my wisdom, I thought it might be a good idea to catch the lil fella and gently toss his slithery a$$ over to the otherside of the creek. I figured it would be out of the way, and would not bite me while I'm fishing.
So, in proper "San-Gabriel-larger-than-hell-diamond-back-fear-of-getting-bit-by-this-python-size-rattler" technique, I grabbed him by the head, hoisted him to eye level, had a brief conversation with him about proper river etiquette, and then prepared to toss him across the river.
I glanced over my grip, assured myself everything was fine and dandy, lowered my arm and pulled it back in an underhand fashion. Everything was going fine, my arm was loaded under the weight of this hefty legless reptile. I started to motion my arm forward in “oh-so-perfect” form, released the snake at a proper angle and trajectory to safely land on the other side of the creek. I followed through with true form, gazed at the flying serpent for a second or two and smiled as he gently floated to the ground on the other side and slithered happily under a rock.
In an instant, my brain started wheeling, my eyes bulged out of there socket and I started yelling profanities, as I quickly realized a small sting in my right hand. Without looking, I knew instantly what had happened. My gaze was still across the river and I swear, that f#$king little legless lizard slithered out of his rock and was staring at me, flicking his red forked tongue at me. Come to think of it, the little bastard was licking his lips.
I quickly looked down at my hand and noticed a very small scratch on top of my forefinger between the first and second knuckle. The little fella decided to leave me with a small token of his appreciation for throwing him across the river and probably separating him from his wife and eight kids. My dad was about 50 yards downstream and I told him what happened. He didn’t believe me. I repeated myself a second and third time until he, in all his great wisdom, told me to just suck it out then. Well, I did. Big mistake. I had a cavity (yes, 17 year olds can get cavities) and then venom went straight into my nervous system. Within 15 to 30 seconds, I felt my tongue swelling and I felt my eyes start to twitch. I explained all this to my dad, and we double timed it out of there.
OK, sorry guys this is so long. So to make this novel short, we quickly reached his truck and started to haul a$$ out of there. Well, there was no car that could go fast enough to get me out of there with the sh#t hat was going on in my system. My dad quickly drove me to the ORV area, and there, the rangers observed me, and quickly called in the cavalry. Within 20 minutes, a chopper landed on the Highway, and E-Vac’d me to foothill medical. I remember loading into the chopper in a gurney, and after that, I was in and out of consciousness. I remember brief segments in the hospital. I remember getting a couple doses of anti-serum and not much else, until I was transferred to Kaiser Permanente (theres where my medical insurance was). I remember sitting in Kaiser while my right finger, arm, and lat area grew to gigantic proportions. I was in ER for several days. The doc was telling my dad that he would have to cutoff my finger and lance my arm because of the intense swelling. My dad said “NO F’N WAY”. Finally, after 3 days of intense pain, semi-consciousness and fear of losing an arm or finger, the hospital finally realized I hadn’t received my full dose of anti-serum over at the first hospital. So Kaiser gave me my remaining 4 or 5 doses of anti-serum and within a few more days, the swelling in my arm and lat started to recede rather quickly.
So here, I am. Alive and kicking. And with a good story to tell. A long story, but a pretty good one. About the only good thing I got out of this bite, was that it happened at the end of my senior year in high school, and I missed all my finals. My teachers took pity on me as they all thought I would lose an arm or something, so they dismissed me from taking the finals, averaged my yearly grades and low and behold, I passed my senior year with 3.85 GPA and didn’t have to take the finals.
That’s my true story and I’m sticking to it.
P.S. I actually wrote a really good article for Men’s Journal Magazine. It was published in 1991 or ’92. And funny thing is, it’s shorter than this article. I also hav tons of "run-ins" with rattlers and catch them quite often. I'll try to find some cool pics of my cool rattlesnake bitten finger about to fall off.
We won't go into what happens if i hear a rattle, especially in chapparal, it aint pretty.
Well anyways the rest of the hike back I kept having these thoughts about what if the snake would have bit me, we were several miles from the car and a long way from the hospital........It could have went really bad!!!!!!
