Re: Experts Advise Against Harassing Rattlesnakes and Sucking on Dog's Nose

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Frank Furter

Experts Advise Against Harassing Rattlesnakes and Sucking on Dog's Nose
May 27, 2009 06:41AM

Registered: 15 years ago
Posts: 1,942

http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2009/05/21/news/wyoming/4f9fffc32853b474872575be000198ee.txt

By JOAN BARRON
Star-Tribune capital bureau
Thursday, May 21, 2009 10:05 PM MDT

CHEYENNE -- (cut)
Bobby Jenkins, 50, ......was outside with his three labs when ……he saw that Tank (one of his dogs) had two fang marks on the top of his nose, which was bleeding.

"It was 20 minutes to town and I knew he would not make it. So I grabbed his nose and started sucking the rattlesnake poison out of the top of his nose and spit it on the ground." Jenkins said.

He called 911 and asked the dispatcher to call his mother, Pat Shimic, and tell her what happened and to go to the veterinarian for anti-venom serum. Jenkins then flagged down a neighbor who gave him and Tank a ride to town. Along the way he spotted his mother's car, and she took Jenkins and the dog to the vet in Torrington. By this time Tank's head had ballooned to three times its normal size. The vet at the Goshen County veterinary clinic, Jenkins said, was surprised the dog was still alive.

After his dog received an anti-venom shot, Jenkins and his mother shopped for groceries to take back to the ranch. "My heart started beating really, really fast and I had a cold sweat," he said. He and his mother headed for the hospital emergency room. "It was awful," Pat Shimic said Thursday. "I could tell he was ready to pass out. He was turning white."

At the emergency room, a nurse told them sucking out the venom was the wrong thing to do. Jenkins received four vials of anti-venom medication. Jenkins and his mother were stunned at the cost -- $3,500 per vial. "I thought they were joking," his mother said."I thought they meant $35."

Jenkins said he is sure Tank would have died had he not sucked out the venom. "It was just instinct," he said. "I saved the dog and I saved myself." A spokesman at the hospital in Torrington said Jenkins was the second snakebite patient this season.

Jenkins said there appear to be more rattlesnakes out this year than before. "They are killing snakes right and left up here," he said. Because of the snakes, he lets the three dogs outside the house only long enough to relieve themselves.

Apparently Jenkins' case is unusual. "I have never heard of this happening to a dog owner," Dr. Tim Hackett, a veterinarian and associate professor of emergency and critical care service at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, said in an e-mail. “I have heard stories about the dangers of sucking venom into your mouth but am not aware of any published cases," he wrote. "No first aid is generally recommended. Just get to a vet/physician as soon as possible," Hackett added.

Zach Walker, a herpetologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said only a handful of people die from snake bites every year. The prairie rattlesnake, he said, is not as poisonous as other types such as the cottonmouth. Moreover, a lot of snakes don't give a full dose of venom.

"They save it for use on prey," Walker said."Some people get dry bites." Harassing a large snake is really dangerous, he said.(cut)

From the Cynic: Could he have become ill from the sudden realization that he sucked on the dog's nose?

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan