Archives of The Cold Blooded News

The Newsletter of the Colorado Herpetological Society

Volume 31, Number 2;   February, 2004

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by Ben Cole, Gainesville, Florida

I volunteer as a cage cleaner and snake handler at Medtoxin Laboratories in Deland, Florida to build apprenticeship time for my venomous license. Medtoxin is one of only five privately owned venom collection facilities in the United States, and there are only a dozen or so in the entire world. This facility currently holds 550 venomous snakes with an expansion plan of up to 750-800 snakes. The majority of the snakes are rattlesnakes, cobras, copperheads, and cottonmouths. There are also a few odds and ends like green and black mambas, gaboon vipers, and taipans.

Venomous ownership is not a task that should be taken lightly. When you add "extractions" to the equation, you increase the risk several hundred fold. Every snake in the extraction line is there for production, so the animals we use produce a lot of venom, have huge injection volumes, and almost always deliver a 'wet,' venomous bite. Low venom producers that 'dry bite' are culled from the colony early on. Then, when you add the physical handling of the animal and restraint of the head, you have dedicated yourself to a very very precarious situation. The nature of the job itself limits the people willing to perform it.

Most of the venom Medtoxin produces is sold to chemical companies who take certain chemical components out for the medical field -- but not necessarily for anti-venom production. CVF stands for cobra venom factor and is used in organ transplant recipients to help suppress the immune system and lessen the chance of a rejected organ.

Some components of copperhead venom are looking favorable for blocking cell growth in some forms of cancer. A chemical found in moccasins and rattlesnakes is being used in heart attack patients to prevent blood clots from forming inside the circulatory system, which may break free, and cause strokes.

The owner of Medtoxin has been handling venomous snakes for 25 years and estimates that he has had 70,000 extractions. When you add cage changing, medicating, feeding, etc, his total rises to well over 100,000 venomous handlings. At this time he has had 9 bites. This brings his percentage of successful safe handlings to 99.99% safe. When I started volunteering for Medtoxin a month or so ago, there had only been 8 bites. The ninth came on July 27, 2003, and I was there in the middle of it all.

Four years ago standing at the MHS meetings in Newport, field herping in Steuben and Stetson Pond, and vending at the Manchester NH Expo all gave me reptile experience, but I never expected to be doing anything like I did last Sunday. It opened my eyes wider than ever.

Sunday was a fairly warm day here in Florida, about 90° inside the herp room, it had just rained for about 30 minutes, the third shower of the day, and it brought out the frogs as the barometric pressure dropped after the rain. I was doing my normal routine in the back room of Medtoxin. I set up ten Tanzanian Puff Adders that had graduated from the shoeboxes to the big box rack, then I cleaned the rattlers, which were comprised of Western/Eastern Diamondbacks, Canebrakes, Mojaves, and some South Americans.

When I started in on the cobras I noticed that they were just being awful. Usually the Cape Cobras are active but even the Chinese and Black and White Spitters were flying out the boxes at the first crack of light from the room. I had almost finished the room when I heard the assistant yell from the front room. We usually break for late lunch when I am done with the back room so I paid no attention. They are always calling back to see if I need anything, or want a soda, or what I want for lunch. But I was just chilling to the radio and caught up in the movement and behaviors of the animals. After about 30 seconds the assistant looked around the corner and yelled, "Get that snake in the box and get out here -- check the lock on the door -- we gotta go".

I was puzzled at first. When I reached the front, I noticed that the five visitors photographing the milking process were all out in the driveway instead of up by the window. The "milker" was being put into the assistant's car. I asked what was going on and that is when I found out the "milker" had been bitten by a 7 foot female West African Green Mamba! Action was needed immediately, and fortunately everybody involved was on the ball.

However, everything that could go wrong... did so. We grabbed the gear and headed out the door. It had been less than two minutes from the bite and the milker knew something was up, it was a wet bite. Another problem -- the milker is allergic to both the venom and antivenin. Due to prior experience, the milker knew he was going to go into anaphylactic shock, so he started to titrate epinephrine directly into his bloodstream. This is a dangerous procedure since it can cause a heart attack. Usually epinephrine is given into a muscle and allowed to be absorbed, but we didn't have enough time.

By the end of the driveway the milker was starting to shake so badly he could not keep the syringe in his wrist. We had to drive about 1/2 mile up the road just to get to a split in the median so we could turn around to go towards the hospital. By that split, the milker was having breathing problems, so we put his feet-on the dash, and got a ventolin inhaler out.

At the same time, I was dialing 911. I am pretty much cell phone illiterate and every time I dialed nothing happened. So, in frustration and panic, the assistant who was driving was yelling for me to give him the phone. He dialed and nothing happened. His cell phone would not let him dial 911 -- it doesn't have enough digits for the phone to register the numbers as a complete call and then send it. Luckily we had a second phone and 911 worked.

At that point, the milker was getting some muscle weakness from the venom and was having serious trouble breathing and keeping his head up. The 911 lady was asking me all sorts of questions that had nothing to do with what I thought was important at the time. I was screaming at her that we had a neurotoxic venomous bite and I needed an ambulance to be coming east on US 92. 911 was asking me the address, and when, and who owns the facility. Then she started asking if I knew whether the snake was venomous or was it something I found outside, and that she didn't believe mambas were in Florida. I screamed a few swear words to emphasize that I knew what I was dealing with and that my friend was dying while she tried to get useless information. She put me on hold and transferred my call. Here in the South, people take serious offense to swearing.

The second 911 lady was much more helpful, got a description of the car we were in, and then dispatched a rescue team. Then we had another problem -- we blew the engine in the car, so we coasted into a Handy-Way gas station. At that point, the milker had lost most voluntary control of his body and was losing the fight to breathe. As a result, he was turning blue and purple. We got him out of the car and onto the ground in the parking lot and immediately gave him another full dose of epinephrine into the leg. The assistant alternated massaging his legs to expedite the absorption of the epinephrine. He also shook the milker vigorously to try and keep him with us.

The milker started to drown in a thick mucous that was being secreted from his mouth and throat. As a result, we rolled him onto his side and scooped out that fluid; we got ready to intubate him and put him on oxygen. There was confusion about whether the oxygen tank would fit onto the "ambu" bag, so we prepped for mouth to mouth to keep the milker going.

All that time I was still on the phone telling them everything we were doing. Finally, we heard sirens in the background and the 911 lady let me go. That whole time, we had the milker keep one hand up to signal that he was still with us, since he did not have enough breath to speak. As the 911 lady let me go, I looked down at the phone to turn it off. As I was looking down I saw the milker's eyes roll up, then shut, and his arms went out flat.

Simultaneously, a fireman/EMT ran up, and we immediately gave him the list of all the stuff we had given the milker. The second and third EMT's were slow getting equipment out of the truck and got several scoldings from the first EMT. They were then told that they would have to do it all enroute to the hospital. The assistant and I loaded the milker onto the stretcher, and he was whisked away.

I caught a quick ride to the hospital. Luckily, one of the first doctors on the scene knew the milker and knew we were a professional setup. They allowed the use of our own antivenins. I said earlier that the milker was allergic to antivenin -- however we decided since the milker was in a full blown anaphylactic episode, he had already blown out all his histamines, mast cells, and immunoglobulins. As a result, there couldn't be anything left in him to object to the antivenin, so it was administered rather quickly. The whole incident from bite to hospital took place in under 10 minutes.

In three hours the milker was up complaining that the water tasted bad and he wanted more ice. An hour after that, I was back at Medtoxin finishing up a few odds and ends, which included cleaning 12 of the other green mambas. I was a little on edge, and I definitely put a lot more weight on what I was doing.