DEL.ICIO.USMonticello man takes on rattlesnake, ends up in hospital
Georgia DNR advises that rattlers are out as weather cools off
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, October 03, 2008
Rattlesnakes are on the move again with the advent of cooler weather, giving birth and mating. So say state officials, who warn you to walk away if you come across one.
Joe Johnston of Monticello didn’t heed that advice. His tractor- and deer-antler assault on a peeved rattler landed him in a helicopter heading for the hospital.
Johnston, 75, a Jasper County farmer, on Sept. 19 came across an Eastern diamondback rattler crossing a road. He tried to kill the snake, but got close to dying himself. He spent two days in the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon after physicians treated him for the poisonous snake’s bite.
“I guess God wasn’t ready for me,” he said.
Georgia is home to the Eastern diamondback, as well as the pygmy rattler and the timber rattlesnake, according to the state Department of Natural Resources. The species are out in these cooler days, roaming woodlands and fields. They will be about until mid- to late November, when dropping temperatures drives them to hibernate. Some are bearing young, while others are searching for mates.
None, said DNR biologist John Jensen, is looking for trouble.
“They’re not going after you,” he said.
Johnston was not convinced. When he saw the rattlesnake crossing a road near a school bus stop, he didn’t hesitate. He drove an International tractor over the snake, then backed over it to make sure it was dead. It was not. Johnston tried again, trapping the snake under the tractor’s left-front wheel. The snake writhed and hissed.
Johnston didn’t have a stick to dispatch the creature, so he reached for the next-best thing — a deer antler he’d found in his hay field. Climbing off the tractor, Johnston whacked the snake in the head with the antler. It snapped to the right, so Johnston moved in closer. It was the wrong move.
“He whipped back to the left,” said Johnston. The snake sank its fangs between his right thumb and forefinger. “It felt like a yellow jacket stung me.”
A former fire chief trained in emergency medical procedures, Johnston knew the snake’s venom would attack his muscles and blood cells. He walked to a nearby house, where two men dialed 911. Rescue workers called for a helicopter to lift him to the medical center, where he remained for two days.
“On Saturday morning [the day after the bite], a doctor told me I was lucky to be there,” said Johnston.
Others might not be so lucky, said Jensen. People walking in the woods in coming weeks need to watch for snakes in the leaves, or in underbrush, he said.
The snake that bit Johnston?
A rescue worker chopped off its head with a shovel. It had nine rattles and will make a “nice hat band,” said Johnston, who vows to do things differently the next time he crosses paths with a Crotalus adamanteus:
“I’m going to have a longer stick.”
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