Archives of The Cold Blooded News

The Newsletter of the Colorado Herpetological Society

Volume 33, Number 3;   March, 2006

Measuring Zero at the Bone

by Erec Toso
University of Arizona, Department of English,
Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA. netoso@u.arizona.edu

But never met this fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
    And zero at the bone.
        -Emily Dickinson

One Saturday morning many years ago, some friends and I were playing in the tumbled, truck-sized boulders of Cochise Stronghold in southern Arizona. Between playing dead in some kind of war game and scrambling over the rounded granite ledges, cliffs, and spires, one of us spotted a Black-tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus). We might as well have seen a blasting cap live-wired to a few sticks of dynamite.

The fear and primal fascination of that snake held us spell-bound, or maybe snake-bound. All of my disparate senses suddenly focused on a point of tight, coherent, blisteringly bright awareness. I magnified my attention onto that snake, compelled by the supreme importance of paying attention to it and to all the immediate sights, smells, sounds, and escape routes.

That visceral awakening was my first taste of the archetypal impact a live snake can have on the psyche. I had dreamed of snakes before and had been vaguely aware of them in some abstract sense, but I had never really felt the grip a snake can have on one's attention. Mythological imagination suddenly materialized there in front of my distractible friends and myself. The undeniable fact of the snake brought the present moment into stark, brilliant clarity. Peril and fascination supercharged those moments, closing down whatever portal had opened the morning to imaginary play. Here was something real, something that invoked an almost unbearable state of elevated consciousness.

***

The snake was not a large one, but its effect on me could not have been greater. I felt simultaneously drawn to the mottled markings and gripped by a reflex to flee.

As we watched it, the snake calmly tasted the air with its tongue, and seemed alert but not hostile. We stared silently for several moments, unable to do more than just breathe. Then one of the boys poked a stick at it, bringing it into action, complete with a buzzing from the tail and a tightening of the coil, an "S" to the upper body, and a lift of the wide head to striking readiness. That sound and shape went straight to some hard-wired part of the brain that began to pump what felt like buckets of adrenaline through our bodies. Its rattling tail left no doubt it wanted us to leave.

We might as well have seen a dragon for how it lit into our fear, sending us in a hasty exit off the mountain and back down to the picnic area.

***

Fast forward about forty years to a big city in the same desert.

The air that night was thick and inescapable, its density blanketing my senses as I shuffled quietly across my front yard. It smelled of monsoon corn and rain-soaked greasewood, tasted like tar. Low clouds, hung with humidity; an afterglow of the storm rested still in space. Drops, stubbornly resisting their fall to earth, stil1 hung-on the paloverde branches, like black:-pearls, eyes closed, expectant, waiting for next light.

As I stepped forward through the dark, sound muffled by the thick, densely woven quilt of air, scent stifled by rising vapors, vibrations dampened by soil saturated and loose, a rattlesnake tasted the air with its heat sensing pits and its delicate tongue.

I walked in a cottony somnolence beneath the arbor of wild, untrimmed trees. The branches wept drops, bent low to the ground with their weight of water, and brushed my brow. But I did not heed them.

I can only imagine the sequence of events that unfolded as I shuffled blindly forward in the dark, half asleep, reviewing the day and planning the next. The snake, its venom sacs full of expectation, turned to flee as the gap between us closed. Unable to escape, the snake turned again and prepared to rattle a threat, to ward off the approach of a bone crushing barbarian, but it was too late for flight, too late for threats as my foot fell very near the snake's body.

No one can know how a snake perceives the world, what it sees from eyes that have never known a lid, how it can wait coiled for days next to a mouse trail, alert as a Samurai, still as stone, for a rodent that mayor may not pass within striking range.

What the snake felt or thought is beyond the grasp of my imagination, but its actions were as clear and defined as blueprints. My thick foot, pumping heart, firing synapses, white bones, and slippery gut -- all that is this ephemeral assembly of cells, chemistry, and electrical impulse -- crossed paths with a Mohave Rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus). Twin points sunk deep into my arch as venom squirted through the hollow fangs and into soft tissue. As sophisticated as a syringe, the delivery system did its work. Then the snake rattled a dry leaves whir.

***

"What happens in one's mind when a life decelerates from supersonic distraction to a standstill of awareness? Do endorphins or adrenaline chemically alter the workings of it, like the effects of hallucinogens? Do the vibrations of the molecules accelerate like air under pressure? Does God tap you on the noggin with a wand that allows light to enter and illuminate, or perhaps disrupt, the inertia of material world habit? Is it all these things?

We may never know, but my world was turned inside out by the surprise waiting for me in the summer heat of my front yard. When others heard about it the reactions were extreme. Some would see in it the realization of a nightmare. Others, a random, freak, coincidence of nature. A few saw it as an unprovoked attack by a demon. No one was neutral.

All the stories said more about those telling than about the snake. The snake posed a physical danger, to be sure, but people face physical danger, like driving, all the time without thinking twice about it. This was something else, and it may be that the danger felt was one of waking up, of having to pay attention to real and immediate surroundings when in snake territory. We are afraid of paying attention, of being mindful, of waking up. We don't want to put forth the effort to be present, but prefer to coast along in the stream of talk in our heads, of being everywhere but here.

***

I hopped up to the porch excited, but not alarmed. One, the actual bite had not been too painful. Two, it seemed unlikely that much venom had been injected in such a brief, inconsequential prick. The snake was simply trying to protect itself and to scare me. Three, there was some thrill in having been bitten, and I thought I would not be excited about something that was really dangerous. But all of my reasons for complacence faded as the swelling and pain began in earnest.

Megan, my wife, dialed 9-1-1 while I sat on the porch swing. I spoke with the operator and let her know that I had been bitten, that I felt pain, that my arch was beginning to swell.

In the next minutes my life as a teacher, soccer coach, jogger, driver, upright pisser, refrigerator door opener dissolved and I became little more than a piece of meat that was being digested by highly toxic enzymes, a body that soon could not work or walk and that was in the first round of a fight for its life. The venom spread though my foot and felt like highly corrosive acid poured on soft, living tissue. It was as if a dragon had hatched and was uncoiling under the narrow confines of my skin. As it uncoiled, its scales tore at my flesh and burned. I felt my skin could not contain such pressure and heat and began to shake as shock set in.

They say that snake bites can be severely painful. I would call them unearthly agony. Your flesh is consumed by dynamic agents that have evolved to make you bleed to death, that attack capillaries and nerves from the inside out. You begin to hemorrhage. You feel like you are being lifted and dropped by breaking waves onto sharp coral, that you cannot come up for air above the pain, that it rolls and rakes and pummels you again and again, relentlessly, incessantly.

At this point, the pain was just beginning, but promised to grow from a tiny flicker to a raging fire. I leaned back against the porch swing, raised my head back to look at the rough-cut rafters, and tried to use the techniques I use to cope with pain while running or cycling. I breathe and watch the pain rise up, tension gather, and then watch it recede as neck, shoulders, and legs relax. I rocked the swing gently with my good leg, trying to focus, to stay calm. I tried to center my attention on my breath, to take refuge in my breath, and to keep my awareness on my breath instead of the foot in front of me. I was not successful. It was a mismatched tug-of-war. All of my consciousness began to shrink onto that area around my left arch that seemed to be uncoiling beneath two blood spots on my sock.

Sean, my younger son, carne out of the house and sat next to me, clearly concerned. I told him that I loved him, that it was going to be all right, that he was a great kid. Inside, however, I had some questions. I realized I had no idea what was going to happen. I wish I could say that I considered the value of my life, how I had lived, and that I vowed to live it better if I would be given the gift of survival. I wish I could say that I was able to harbor noble thoughts that one might have standing near the abyss of possible death. No, from very early on, all I could handle was surviving the pain.

I held on until the paramedics arrived and then surrendered to the shakes that had been building. They examined my foot, retrieved a gurney from the ambulance, and loaded me onto the bed. One of the paramedics captured the snake beneath a tree and bagged it for later release (I'm guessing). I saw the silhouette and judged it to be about four and a half feet long, and maybe as thick as my forearm at its widest girth. Then it was gone.

The paramedics began the long process of recording the spread of pain and venom up from my arch to ankle to calf and eventually thigh and hip. With a permanent felt-tipped marker, they turned my leg into a kind of ruler that measured and timed the effects of venom on the tissues in my foot and ankle. The swelling took a life of its own as it moved up my leg like a flood from the bite. It was a flood of envenomation, and proceeded up my leg about two or three inches every half hour. With the swelling came the pain. The paramedics kept asking me if I knew who I was, what year it was, who was president, where I was, how many fingers they were holding up. I felt like I was completing a survey while my house burned down around me. Rafters collapsing, beams crashing down in an array of scattered embers, exploding propane cylinders -- none of it was noticed by my interviewer.

I remember seeing the familiar intersections, strip malls, gas stations, and landmarks of my life go by past the windows. People were going about their lives on a beautiful summer evening in August. I was in an ambulance for the first time in my life, covered with a blanket, shivering and cold. I did not know how the night would turn out, what my fortune would be, whether or not these were to be my last few hours on earth.

When we arrived at the hospital, two more paramedics emerged from the emergency room, to help lower me from the ambulance. My leg felt heavy, like it gained ten pounds, and already I could barely move my toes or swivel my ankle. They wheeled me into the emergency room where they continued to mark and monitor the spread of swelling and pain. White coats with clipboards arrived to determine my SSS, the snakebite severity score, the assessment that would govern and gauge both the effect the bite was likely to have on me and what kind of a response would be best given my injury. I got a high score, very severe. Oh, good, some portion of my ego thought, I got a high score. If I'm going to do something, anything, I want to do it well, even if it kills me.

There could be no morphine until they checked me for allergic reactions to the antivenom, or antivenin, depending on who is talking, which had to be mixed, infused, and monitored. So we waited. Doctors came and went. Interns, emergency personnel, nurses, all came by to see the bite and its effects on this patient.

Megan arrived and helped make decisions. There was talk of the different kinds of antivenins, of risks, side effects, complications, and also of possible surgical intervention if the antivenin failed to neutralize the venom and I could not coagulate sufficiently. The doctors reviewed the options and explained that I would receive Cro Fab, a new antivenin treatment derived from sheep plasma rather than the older horse-derived antivenin, which, in the quantities I was about to receive, would produce serious "serum sickness" and other side effects. The two antivenins are extracted from the blood of animals that developed anti-bodies to various kinds of snake venoms, including rattlesnakes and other pit vipers.

All of this passed in a blur of pain. I was hanging onto the bed because I was shaking so much. I continued to slip into shock. Treating rattlesnake bites is complicated business, as doctors have to take into account the amount of venom, the possibility of allergic reaction to antivenins, severity and spread of venom, and other medical conditions. I just wanted them to get on with it, to start infusing the goods and injecting me with painkillers.

The test infusion of antivenin produced no allergic reactions, so they began to inject me with morphine. I could finally come up for air above the pain. I still hurt, but the morphine gave me the ability to study the pain rather than be consumed by it. The infusion of antivenin began in earnest about midnight with six vials followed by another six to get control of the spread of venom. They had set aside twenty-four vials, and would proceed through the next couple of days dosing me two at a time until the venom was neutralized. I ended up using eighteen vials at about a thousand dollars a vial, all but exhausting the hospital's supply.

I was moved into the ICU for monitoring and on the way threw up. I threw up again and again, waves of nausea rising violently out of an already choppy sea of sensations. Generally, I rested and listened to the rains on the roof and outside the window. My IV of saline solution filled my bladder and I peed prodigious quantities into a plastic urinal that the nurses would measure, empty, and return, freshly washed. I made it a point not to set the urinal next to my water pitcher, as the handles were very similar and I did not want to be punished again for not paying attention.

I woke at dawn, sure that I would live. Woke. I don't know if that is the right word. I came to after a coma of years; I wheeled around the corner of darkness and re-entered the world of the living. I felt I had been handed back the precious gift of Iife and been given another chance to walk on the earth in all its wonder. Glory is not too strong a word for what I felt and I wept in humility, gratitude, and joy.

***

One Saturday several months later, I decided to clean out a packrat nest. The packrats had taken over a small, abandoned chicken coop in the back yard and filled it with spiny branches of cholla, prickly pears, and, their favorite delicacy -- mesquite beans. The pile was almost three feet high and filled two fifty-gallon garbage cans.

Now cleaning out a packrat midden is not only unpleasant, with all the spines that penetrate the thickest of work gloves and the acrid stench of rat urine, but is dangerous. Rat and mouse feces can carry a variety of viral hazards, including hanta virus, a potentially fatal source of infection. Dust from the debris rose from the cavity of the garbage can after I emptied each shovel full.

I had put it off too long and decided to take my chances. I wore a paper filter mask, long sleeves and heavy boots. I spent the morning shoveling, hauling, sweeping, lining the shed with hardware cloth, and setting traps. This was war.

That night, the first night out after the bite, Megan and I went to a party and stayed late. I had not been out after 10 since August, a full three months. Wine, bright lights, music, and feisty conversation had all helped distract me from the pain in my foot. Then we returned and were walking from the car to the house along our desert path. Megan had remembered the flashlight, had given it to me and I was scanning the ground in front us.

It was a cool night, and to my mind, well past rattlesnake season. I thought they had found a den and bunked down with a mate or small group of snakes for the winter, so I wasn't watching as much as one might expect.

With a jerk, Megan grabbed my elbow, gasped, and pointed at a rattlesnake curled up on one side of the trail. It blended in with the sand and had settled itself into a circle of mounded sand. It looked comfortable, harmless, benign.

I wanted to talk to the snake, directing it to the back yard, where my packrat nemeses were re-grouping for a counter assault. I wanted to give the snake half the back yard, and draw a line in the sand that it could not cross under any circumstances. I wanted to lead it to the promised land, where packrats flowed like honey.

But I collected my garbage can and snake tongs and captured the snake after calling the fire department to come pick it up. Reaching for the snake forced me to overcome some pretty fierce visceral memory, but the snake did not struggle. Instead it looked straight at me, as if wondering why I was disturbing it. It was time to rest, to sleep, not struggle or hunt.

That snake could have lived with me if I had no children, had no obligation to remove all unnecessary risk to their well being. If I lived alone, I would make a pact with the snake to constantly be aware, to step lightly, to join forces against the rats.

It wasn't going to happen today, though. Instead of rattlesnakes, we will have rats. Humans are selecting out those species we fear and creating habitat for those that they hunt. We are moving toward a world of rats and away from a world of rattlesnakes, mountain lions, bears, and less threatening creatures like native birds and plants.

I thought my heart was going to break as I stood in the parking lot waiting for Rural Metro to come and haul the snake to an almost certain death in a new territory at such a sensitive time of year.

The lights of the large truck bent around the curve tracing the contour of our driveway before swinging toward me, headlights growing as they shone straight into my eyes. From behind the blinding glare, the driver emerged from the big diesel rig. He left it running as he stepped down, grabbed his snake box, a small tackle box, his snake tongs, and stepped forward into the light.

As he approached, he looked at me with some recognition.

"Aren't you the guy...."

"Yup."

"Man, I've been an EMT for over twelve years and I was here that night. Worst bite I've ever seen."

I just nodded.

"So you've got another one," he asked, looking into the shadowy void of the trash can.

I nodded again with some resignation.

"You must hate these things," he went on, aiming his flashlight into the can before grabbing the snake hard with his tongs and thrusting it into the small tackle box. He surprised me by slamming the lid shut before the snake's tail was fully inside. I think I saw the tail get pinched by the lid, but I wasn't sure.

"No, not really. I think about them a lot though."

He looked at me for second like I was the strangest man on earth, and then turned back to the truck, as he threw the box and tongs onto the passenger seat. "Well you take care now," he said as he climbed in, his mind already on something else.

He backed the big truck into a Y turn and then sped up the grade back to the road. The lights dropped over the ridge and the engine's clacking valves and low rumble faded into the distance. I was left standing there in the dark, snake tongs in one hand, fifty-gallon plastic garbage can in the other, breathing in the dispersing fumes left by the big diesel. I limped back toward the house, pulling my jacket tight across my shoulders, a cold and unforgiving loneliness blowing through my soul.