Living in the Desert

The following light hearted story had a frightening turn about an hour after I posted it. Tarzan began to complain that his leg hurt and when I looked at it, I found it was swollen and had two small puncture wounds which were difficult to see because his skin is so dark. When he agreed to go to the emergency room to have it looked at, I began to worry that it really was a snake bite even though he doesn't remember the snake actually making contact with his leg.

Tarzan is now in the hospital for overnight observation. I have been in critical care with him since 7:00 p.m. and it is now 4:00 a.m. We count our blessing though, he is resting fine and healing well. While we were in critical care, one man had a broken neck and pulled the tube out of his neck that was helping him breath, one was found unconscious by the canal -- he was either on drugs or someone had beat the heck out of him or both, one came in with blood pressure so high they were afraid she would go into cardiac arrest before they could get it under control, one came in with back problems and couldn't speak English. And there we were with a little old snake bite. The interesting this was that they don't see very many snake bites so as the word spread, we had doctor after doctor come in and ask us "official" questions so they could see the snake bite.

I have to say one more thing. I have never received such kind care in a hospital. We first went to the closest hospital, and they sent us to the County Hospital where Poison Control is. In the first hospital, they took us in ahead of a whole line of people because rattle snake venom can be so dangerous, they had us transferred to County Hospital where we received excellent care and everyone was so kind. I was very impressed and kept thanking people over and over again.

This is Tarzan with jig, rake, hatchet and a pulled muscle. It seems a rattlesnake nearly got him and it slithered under the woodpile. He reacted like a gazelle and got out of the way.

I kept telling him it was long gone, but he insisted on moving the wood pile in the 100 degree weather. We were both covered with sweat when he saw it quivering under the bamboo shade on the bottom of the wood pile.

Tarzan's quick hand pegged the rattler with a jig he uses when he hunts bull frogs.

I snapped another picture before we finished it off.

Tarzan cut its head off with the hatchet while I held it down with the jig.

This is its rattler. Tarzan measured the snake at 2 1/2'. It was a young one, but we understand they are the most poisonous.

Our dogs were interesting around the dead snake. Dottie has been "snake broke." She ran and hid when she got the scent. Suzie who has not been "snake broke" wanted to smell it and find out what it was. She would have been bit while Dottie would have run away if the snake had been alive. I guess we will be spending another $250 on our dogs to protect Suzie.