How awful, this business of being bitten by rattlesnakes. 
Patrick Hotchkiss of Quartzsite, Ariz… had just stepped off his porch Sunday afternoon when he was struck.
“I felt two sharp things, sort of akin to piece of broken glass that snaps off,” said Patrick Hotchkiss, from his hospital bed at Banner Good Samaritan Hospital.
Hotchkiss said this particular snake was about 2-and-a-half feet long and did not rattle prior to striking.
Sadly, the number of the bitten is increasing!
Banner Poison Control Center treated four patients this past weekend for rattlesnake bites. There have been eight victims in the past week.
Sadly, the bitten tend to be a bit slow, if you know what I mean:
“We’ve seen several people who’ve tried petting the snakes, and even on occasion people trying to kiss the snake. Any of those things usually result in the patient getting bitten,” said Dr. Michael Levine, a toxicologist at Banner Poison Control Center.
But slow or fast, no human deserves to be humiliated by such coldblooded creatures. The sheer audacity! The nerve! How dare they sink their fangs into our flesh. Shameless are these slithering, hissing, rattling snakes.
The image is by Charles & Clint.
Anthropomorphism.
Arizona is a big giant Hellhole.
When we lived in Eastern Washington when I was a kid we used to keep a snowshovel on the back patio by the door… My dad told me it was a “snake spanking paddle” and when I became mildly hysteracl about the idea of hurting the snakes I was assured that they werent dead, they were just napping…really its no wonder my parents had to sit through many a teachers conference.
Who are these people who are trying to “pet and even on occasion kiss the snake”??!!
Sounds like getting bit and needing a course of anti-venom may be the least of their worries (also sounds like they really were ‘asking for it’).
Sounds more like an increase in people suffering from mental illness.
In Arizona, rattlesnake bites are Gods way of thinning the herd.
Cheeky.
Man, fuck snakes.
I can’t help but think this is apropos of me being bored out of my mind last night, and deciding to watch “Snakes On A Plane”. Those fuckers were just scary. And now would be a good time for me to say “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I’VE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKIN’ SNAKES ON THIS MOTHERFUCKIN’ PLANE!”
How dare they do what they do, better than anything we do.
Yeah.
I’ve been to Quartzsite. It’s a very small town out in the middle of the desert. The kind of place you would expect to find rattlesnakes. I like the shovel idea. Cut their head off and you’ve got some tasty meat.
Back in my army days, on the field training excercises we’d do to Yakima, one of the biggest things they’d warn people about was rattlesnake bites. Listening to a bored-sounding Yakimite range officer explain that, yes, snakebites occurred on the legs, but the most life threatening injuries were to the hands and face… because the soldiers absolutely HAD to get a picture of themselves kissing a rattlesnake to send home to whomever. The problem, evidently, was not the kiss per se, but the fact that the snake was royally pissed off and it was hard to put it down and get away fast enough. God, I miss those days…
@6 – that’s simply the best avatar ever. I *heart* Mr. Peabody.
I’m still snickering over the phrase “kiss the snake”…
Unlike its cousin the common trouser snake, the rattlesnake is dangerous and should be avoided.
I dunno, Greg… Some of those trouser snakes are mighty dangerous, as well!
In California, we know that Spring, when the baby rattlers start to be active, is the most dangerous time for bites because the juveniles tend to inject all the poison they have, whereas the adults, who’ve had more experience hunting, only inject enough to take down small prey.
Hiss kiss fang bang.
@16: No, they’re fine, you just have to know how to handle them properly.
You know, in Earth Abides, the only people who survive the pandemic are people who have bitten by rattlesnakes, so maybe the people kissing snakes are just trying to survive swine flu?
Jesus almighty. Please make it stop.
I live in Quartzsite and now I watch my step when going outside. a good lesson. Qa for those people who try to kiss snakes, well, they are probably high or Democrats.