Killed by a copperhead??

I read an account of a woman near Cumberland, MD who was wroking in her flower beds around the house when she felt something stick her. Turned put to be a baby copperhead. You never know when some thing's around. I was salvaging bricks from a wall of a house that burned forty or fifty years ago. Most of the mortar was just loose material from the heat of the fire. A small ring necked snake was inside the wall.

Most snakes just want to get away from you. If you give them warning, they'll skedaddle.

So Darren.. I know you said you've not seen any out there, but our neighbor at the end of the hollow, his kid got bit on the toe by one a couple years ago.. didn't go to the Dr.. Last year I was looking through some tin roofing (carefully because I just had that feeling) Sure enough, I picked up a piece and there sat a small copperhead... By the time I had tried to get my 38 with shot shells out of my back pocket, he was gone.. fast little bugger... and yep.. I know snakes well.. It was a copperhead.. Last year Travis' Rott got bit on the face by one... The dog did OK...

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Never let your fear decide your fate!
Kein Mitleid für die Mehrheit

I catch any king/black snake I can and release it on the farm. I have yet to see a copperhead in the area. There are quite a few king snakes which might account for their absence close by. This is a milk snake which most folks around here kill on sight thinking it's a copperhead.

A big difference between a milk or King and a copperhead.. copperheads aren't shiny.. My wife found a cool King like that, only a little darker last summer.. I grabbed him and tried to get her to touch it, but I did explain the differences between it and a copperhead to her.. She wouldn't get close enough to get a look at it's eyes either..

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Never let your fear decide your fate!
Kein Mitleid für die Mehrheit

Dana, I let my back yard grass get about knee high trying to finish a job on time that I had contracted for!
Now I have heard people tell me that they had gotten bitten and didn't even fill it when it happened, and I never called them a lair but in my head they were! I thought heck, you have to fill a snake bite you!
I was wrong!
I finished the job early one morning in August and it got to 102* that day!
I had a young boy working for me so I got him to help me cut the grass!
There were all kinds of bushes and low hanging tree branches we had to cut around and I was all scratched up, in the heat of the day, and burning all over but we had cut it down to maybe 25 x 50 left when I started getting sick!
Now I felt that snake bite me, but I brushed it off as another scratch on my leg!
We had stopped and bought a chicken dinner for and early lunch on the way home and I thought something that I ate was what it was so I made myself throw everything up! This might sound stupid to you, but I drank a lot of water and shook my stomach around for r couple of minutes and threw up again!
I had picked up my three year old daughter from the baby sitter and had her with us and I toll the boy the heck with it, I'll finish it later after it cools down some and took him home! I was driving a 1956 Fort flatbed truck that wasn't the best handling vehicle I ever drove, and on the way back I had to pull over three times before I got to my nieces house where I stopped to see what the heck was wrong with me!
She made me a pallet in the floor in front of the air conditioner and after a while I felt better so I went on home!
Then I really got sick!
I didn't have a phone and I couldn't even get to a neighbors house for help!
I had 11 ice trays in the freezer and I made a pitcher of ice water and laid down on the couch!
I was sweating like crazy and cold at the same time! I drank the first pitcher of water from a glass and I am not sure when, but instead of breaking the ice out of the trays, I started putting it in the pitcher, tray and all.
About 2 am I heard the neighbors across the street come home and tried to yell at them but I woke up about 3 am, the upper half of me laying on the porch and my legs and feet still in the trailer! I got another pitcher of water with the tray in it, and drank it in just a few minutes and covered back up on the couch!
Then it dawned on me that I looked like Chuck Conner's on the Rifleman on a show where he had gotten bite by a rattle snake!
Sweeting and covered up but still freezing!

I am reading at http://www.venomoussnakes.net/snakebites.htm and other places that the anti-venom, if used, can cause kidney damage. Maybe this is what contributed?

The good thing about living in the "Frozen Tundra" of N. WI - we only have two types of snakes, for the most part.
1. Fire snakes, found under rocks - I don't think these would strike you even if you wanted them to. And then the bite would be equivalent to a deer fly bite.
2. Garter snakes. And only a few. Last one seen was a few years ago. Again, not prone to strike.

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"Most" but not necessarily all. I've seen copperheads be aggressive but usually only after they know they're in trouble. I've tried to kill them with a hoe and had them stand their ground and even slither towards me while striking at the hoe. Cotton mouth water moccasins are even worse. I hired a man using an excavator to clean out some brush along the lakefront, and saw one climb up into the cab coming after him. He had learned to keep a little .410 snake charmer with him at all times.

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Society has gotten to the point where everybody has a right, but nobody has a responsibility.

summer before last we had a string of snake bites in the nubian herd.. no less then 7 of the girls come in for morning milking with a fresh snake bite (clear fang marks.. moderate to severe swelling.. depending on where they were bitten).. most of them had bites higher up on their heads.. most above the eye ridge..one poor doe got hit right at the edge of her right eye.. two in the side of the neck (we treated each by cleaning the wounds well and giving them antihistamines and antibiotics)... we've had lots of critters bit by copperheads over the years (from the small house dog to a jersey cow).. BUT never this many.. day after day.. whatever was happening was happening AFTER they were put up for the night??? checked the doe barn top to bottom.. sure we had a snake in there.. nothing.. realized with all the bites being top of the head and side of the neck..the strikes were happening while the does were head down low.. reaching out.. They can get out of the doe barn at night to an outdoor area behind the barn.. we guessed that they were sticking their heads thru the cattle panels back there and the snake was getting them as they ate what browse they could reach.. we searched out there.. again nothing.. the very next morning.. my then 8 month pregnant daughter told me to get the gun and come out back.. right next to the back step (less then a foot from where she had walked in and out a half dozen times that morning laid one of the biggest copperheads I've ever seen).. guessing it was a female. she was also one of the most beautiful ones I've ever seen.. I thought about relocating her..(didn't want her making herself at home under my steps).. but she ended up having a really nasty temper.. the second we moved the slightest bit towards her .. she went defensive and then aggressive.. after having so many goats already bitten and fearful of getting one of us bitten.. I ended up shooting her.(wondering if she was even the Culprit??) ..but no more bites happened that summer.. so I'm sure she was the right snake.. I'm still thankful none of the does had any lingering effects from the bites.

susie mo ozarks

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My step dad got bit by a copperhead about 15 years ago, he's still going.

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Dh said his grandpa died of cirrhosis of the liver. Not too surprising because he was a long long time heavy drinker. And it was several years after the snake bite. He got bit while stumbling in the woods, drunk.

If you guys are interested check out bill haase on YouTube or Google.

Bill haast....sorry.

Grand fathers baby brother died at age 3 from baby copperheads he thought they w ere fishing worms.

I got bitten by a black snake last summer and got very sick just from her. Can't imagine what a. Poison est one would do to me.

I always wondered who that little boy was. My grandmother told me that story when I was about 9.

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Vicker
If you're born to hang, you'll never drown.

Back in the 60's there were two stories told about copperheads. We were young and still believe them to be true.
The first was about a man going fishing on the backwater of the Ohio river. He came upon two young boys fishing as he passed by he said"Boy,are the fish biting?" they replied " no,not like these here worms are!". H just thought"silly kids" and went on. Returning from fishing he found both boys dead,and some of those "biting" worms,young copperheads!
The second story was of a farmer that had lost his wife. Just some days after she died he went to the barn and found a cow down so called the vet. While the vet was there his 3 kids were playing ball in the yard. The ball went under the house so they sent the smallest boy under to get it. He didn't come back out so the older boy went in and collapsed with his feet hanging out of the wall. The girl pulled him out and found baby copperheads on him and ran to the barn to get help. The vet was leaving and didn't see her and backed over her and killed her.So within a matter of a few days this man lost his wife and all three kids.
No idea if it was true or not but as I said we believed it!


Wade

The first story is word for word what my grandma told me.

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Vicker
If you're born to hang, you'll never drown.

That's kind of strange! The fact that I'm sure there is some difference in our age and when we grew up and where we grew up and remembering the exact same story! And it making that big of impression on both of us that we still remember it after all these years! Life is strange. Small world!

Wade

I heard it around 69, and my grandma probably held onto the story for a while.

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Vicker
If you're born to hang, you'll never drown.

And I heard it a decade earlier.

Wade

I'm guessing that if your friend was "drunk as usual" that contributed more to his liver failure than a snake bite.