Early Saturday morning October 27th, Linda let Tank and Bella out into the backyard as normal for their morning duties. There was no fuss or noise but Linda noticed that Tank had two blood spots on his nose when he came back into the house. She went outside and heard the snake and came and got me. Here we go again!
We actually have taken preventative measures and this is the first time a snake has gotten into the inner sanctum of our back yard. We have a mesh on the lower parts of the fence and deploy Snake Away pellets yearly. This has worked well, until now.
It was about 5:45am. I tend to lean towards a shotgun but Linda reminded me it WAS a bit early for that amount of noise and asked did I REALLY want to make that loud of a bang. She is smart. Shovel it is.
Here is the result:
Tank was a trooper, he didn’t make a fuss or really act differently but we still rushed him to the Emergency Vet Hospital so they could treat him. If you look at his nose you can see the rattler bit him at a 90 degree angle. You can also see the swelling starting in these pictures. Poor dude!
The question is always “was it a wet or a dry bite?”. Snakes usually won’t use their venom for a wet bite unless they can eat the pray. Obviously this snake was not going to eat Tank, but the blood work showed damaged red blood cells so there was some venom used.
They gave him antivenin (yes, thats spelled correctly, don’t ask me why but it is) and he stayed overnight for monitoring. We picked him up the next day. Bella was not the same without him around (she kept looking for him).
We learned later that Tank was the first of TEN snake bites that day. We believe its because its getting colder and the rattlers are looking for places to bed down for the winter.
I am sure there are those of you who are angry that I killed the snake. I bet I know who you are. Tough. There are plenty of them and they are not protected, its our land, our dog, our choice.
We decided to keep the skin and display it some way. Here is a look at how to skin a snake (there is more than one way).
