Daily Reptile News

Valley man may pay big after getting bitten twice by snake

SCOTTSDALE, AZ — A Valley man might now have to pay big after getting bitten twice by a snake.

Keith Hediger was bitten by a rattlesnake and not just once.

“It’s an incredible amount of pain,” he said.

A week ago, he was out walking his dogs in the desert before they ran off towards a bush, sniffing inside.

“They thought it was a lizard or something,” Hediger said. “Then I saw there was a snake in there.”

To protect his dogs, he reached into the bush to pull them out. That’s when he felt a snap and pulled his hand out with a two-foot-long rattlesnake still attached.

“I actually had to pull it and throw it to the ground,” Hediger said. “That’s why I think it released a lot more venom.”

Keith said the snake was attached to him for two to three seconds.

When he got to the hospital, he needed almost three times the anti-venom than normal.

“I took 55 vials of anti-venom,” Hediger said.

A normal snake bite patient needs about 20 vials, according to the Arizona Poison Control Center.

And the vials aren’t cheap. In fact, one can cost up to $3,000.

“Hopefully, I have good insurance,” Hediger said.

He was in the hospital for four days. He will also need skin grafts for the black, dead tissue on his hand.

“I should have been more cautious about it,” Hediger said. “Personally, I have seen tons of rattlesnakes and just never realized what they can do.”

Alligator found abandoned in Fargo

FARGO, N.D. – An abandoned alligator has found a temporary home among the Bison.

The roughly 2-foot-long reptile was discovered about 6:45 p.m. Thursday outside a Fargo apartment building in the 1800 block of 42nd Street South.

The apartment’s manager called Fargo police, and the gator was kept in a bathtub until community service officers arrived, Sgt. Joe Anderson said.

City ordinance prohibits keeping exotic animals as pets, including alligators.

Anderson said police didn’t determine who owned the animal, and no charges will be filed.

“How the person came to be in possession of it, I have no idea,” he said. “I think probably the owner of it realized that at 2 feet long it’s going to get bigger and tried to get rid of it.”

Police contacted the Red River Zoo and North Dakota State University, where zoology professor Will Bleier agreed to give the gator a place to crash.

Bleier, who chairs NDSU’s biological sciences department, said it’s hard to estimate the animal’s age because gators’ growth depends heavily on how much they’re fed and at what temperature they’re kept. If it was a wild gator, he said he’d guess it was about 2 years old.

Alligators and their crocodilian cousins normally have a “rather nasty” temperament, but this gator reportedly was handled a lot and was cold and not very active when it arrived, Bleier said.

“As alligators go, it seems like it’s fairly docile,” he said.

Bleier said he placed a call to the Chahinkapa Zoo in Wahpeton, N.D. – Director Kathy Diekman is a former student – to see if the zoo could take the alligator, but he hadn’t heard back yet.

“That’s my intent is to try to find a good home for it,” he said.

Bleier’s department is no stranger to gators. It previously had two of the reptiles as educational specimens for about 10 years.

More rain means more snakes

A long, rainy winter coupled with plenty of insects and lizards may make for a dangerous summer when it comes to encounters with the Mojave green rattlesnake, according to one local expert.

“I believe the much wetter season along with a colder March is causing the Mojaves to try to make up for lost time,” Joseph Banashek of the Mojave Desert Rattlesnake Research group in Adelanto said, with the snakes hungry and anxious to mate after missing their typical seasonal debut by more than a month.

Banashek found his first Mojave of the season on a dirt road in Adelanto shortly after 9 p.m. April 9. The 28-inch snake was a male, out in the cool night air.

What concerned him, he said, was the female snake he found nearby Wednesday at around 3 p.m., with temperatures nearing 75 degrees. The 32-inch snake was coiled up and lifted a foot off the ground, not moving when his truck came within three feet.

With more than 20 years studying the local Mojave population, Banashek said he’s probably only found four or five out in the open midday.

“Both snakes have been very defensive, biting and standing their ground — to me much more than normal,” he said.

When he finds a Mojave, Banashek takes a GPS lock on its location. He weighs, measures and photographs the snakes, and puts a small marking with liquid paper on their base rattle. He then re-releases them where he found them unless it was in a populated area, reporting his findings to a nearby university and to the state.

Banashek said he doesn’t believe there were any reported Mojave bites last year, but fears that could change this season.

Fla. property found littered with dead animals

OCALA, Fla. — Hundreds of dead animals have been found at an Ocala-area home.

An official at the Marion County Animal Center says 348 dead animals, mostly just skeletal remains, were found across the property, as well as in cages, in feed bags and in plastic bags stuffed in the owner’s freezer. Another 375 animals were found alive but malnourished.

The live animals included 151 dogs and 156 birds as well as cattle, tortoises, cats, hamsters, sheep, horses, rabbits and lizards.

The 64-year-old owner of the property, who is licensed to sell exotic birds, was taken for a mental health evaluation and treatment after officials discovered the problem Thursday. He was living in a mobile home found littered with animal feces and human waste.

He’s not yet been charged with any wrongdoing.

Man avoids conviction over nightclub snake

A Bendigo magistrate in central Victoria has ordered a 26-year-old man to make a payment to a wildlife charity, after he took a snake into a local nightclub.

Nathan Paxton of Bendigo has admitted taking the carpet python into the HuHa Nightclub last September.

He was working as a bar attendant and posed for several photos with the snake throughout the night.

Paxton later told investigators from the Department of Sustainability and Environment, the photos would be used to promote the venue. He said the python belonged to his grandmother.

Paxton was not required to enter a plea and was ordered to pay a sum of money to a Healesville wildlife charity.

Magistrate Jennifer Tregent did not record a conviction.

Owner of lost python panicked, left snake in Nebraska Hampton Inn hotel room

Knoxville pet lovers are keeping a better handle on their animals this week after learning about a Nebraska python owner’s recent blunder.

The Associated Press reported the Nebraska Humane Society  found the python owner after the snake was discovered in a hotel toilet Thursday.

The snake owner stayed at a La Vista Hampton Inn in late March. When the pet snake turned up missing, the owner panicked and left the hotel without notifying management, the Associated Press reported.

The python was found by another guest and the Humane Society was notified.

The owner has not been cited and hotel officials declined to comment, the Associated Press reported.

Alligator found outside ND apartment building

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — A 2-foot-long alligator has been found wandering outside a Fargo apartment building.

The reptile was discovered just before 7 p.m. Thursday.

The apartment’s manager called police, and the alligator was kept in a bathtub until authorities arrived.

Police have been unable to find its owner.

Will Bleier, a zoology professor at North Dakota State, has taken in the alligator until a permanent home is found. He estimates the reptile is about 2 years old.

Fargo has an ordinance bans keeping exotic animals, such as alligators, as pets.

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