Molly and I ventured to Escalante yesterday for another glorious weekend of camping and hiking. After three hours of driving through the middle of nowhere (the last 30 miles of which were on a horrid washboarded dirt road), we finally arrived at the trailhead for our first hike. We get out of the car, take Haley for a pee, and not even a minute later, she gets bitten… by a rattlesnake.
It happened very quickly. She was sniffing around just a few feet ahead of me, then screamed and jumped back. Then I saw it… an itty-bitty, teeny-weeny baby rattlesnake. I yelled for the animal control officer we had just chatted with in the parking lot. It was a nice coincidence she was hiking there that day too. She ran over, confirmed it was a rattler, examined poor Haley’s face, and gave us the only advice she could… get back in the car and get her to a vet, pronto. She didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, but having her there somehow kept me completely calm, when I’m sure I would have been freaking out had she not been.
And so ten minutes after getting out of the car, we got right back in, drove those awful 30 miles back to the highway, and asked the rangers where the nearest vet was. But there wasn’t one… not in Escalante, not in Boulder, not anywhere. I called work and told them what happened, and that we’d be there in about two hours.
Meanwhile, Haley’s face had swollen, but not terribly so, and a little blood crusted over at the puncture wound. She looked pretty good for having been bitten by a rattlesnake, but you don’t take chances with rattlesnake bites. She got groggy and fell asleep. She always does on long car rides though, so it was hard to tell how she was feeling. I knew it wasn’t good though when she wouldn’t wag her tail when I called her name.
When we finally get to work, I open the door to let her out, and she is happy and spunky. I knew this would happen. We’d drive three hours to the vet and she’d be fine. She gets examined and we conclude only one fang punctured her. And while baby rattlesnakes are much more dangerous than adult ones, this one must not have gotten much venom out. No antivenin needed. Pain killers only. Swelling should be gone by the end of the weekend.
It’s a little late in the year for rattlers to be out at this elevation, but it was a warm day, and we just got unlucky. Hopefully now though, Haley and her curious nose have learned the lesson that the standard “I sniff you, you sniff me” doggie etiquette does not apply to squiggly little snakes.
The swelling as of 10 p.m. last night. This morning, it has moved in a way that makes her look like a bull terrier.
The blasted snake. He was really little. Don’t be fooled by the baby size though. Babies are born with full-strength venom and tend to inject all of it when provoked, rather than adults who will only inject a fraction of their supply. We just got really lucky that this baby didn’t get too much into Haley.
(snake photo by Molly)
10.29.08 UPDATE - Thanks to some rattlesnake enthusiasts, the snake has been identified as a midget faded rattlesnake. It is a rare species, but is known to be around where we were hiking. They are very small, but very toxic. The one that bit Haley was still a young one, but even adults don’t usually grow past 24 inches long. Their venom is one of the most toxic venoms in all of North America, so I now feel even more lucky that Haley did so well with the bite.
