Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 16, 1993 TAG: 9310160286
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Landmark News Service
DATELINE: FRANKLIN LENGTH: Medium
One moment she was riding her bike to the YMCA. She felt something hit the back of her head, and in an instant, a copperhead was wrapped twice around her neck and squeezing, its head just inches from her face, poised to strike.
"I had to grab something" to get the snake away from her face, Chris said. She would've liked to grab it just behind its head but in her haste got the head itself.
The snake sank its fangs deep into the first finger of her right hand.
Chris said she slung the snake hard to the ground but figured she had to keep hold of it somehow "so they will know what kind of medicine to give me."
The snake's head was copper and triangular. "That looks identical to a copperhead," she thought, though she'd never seen one in the neighborhood.
She pinned the snake under the back tire of her bike to make sure someone could identify it.
By this time, blood was spilling out of her finger. She tried to slow the flow by squeezing her right wrist with her left hand. No luck. She was only about 40 yards from her house but starting to feel woozy.
John Beale of Courtland and Charles Blanton of Murfreesboro, N.C., saw her as they drove by in their pickup. They stopped and helped her to her house.
The men told her mom, Velma Holt, that Chris had been bitten by a poisonous snake.
Chris said, "Mom, my throat is closing."
At a very high speed, Velma drove Chris to Southampton Memorial Hospital, less than 2 miles away. In the hospital parking lot, they bumped into Chris' doctor, Michael Ponder.
By then, the doctor said, her right arm was half again larger than normal, and soon it was 2 1/2 times normal size.
The two men arrived about five minutes after Chris and her mom. They had the snake, which they'd killed with a tire iron.
Chris was given antivenin and spent the next two nights in the emergency room plus one more night in a regular hospital bed. For a week, her right arm had to be immobilized in a sling.
Even though it's been almost three weeks since she was bitten, she still feels some pain in her right hand and the finger remains stiff and sore. The fang marks, about an inch apart, still show. But her doctor said she should recover completely.
"I'm not afraid of snakes," Chris said. "I guess that's the reason I didn't totally freak out." No one in Virginia has died of a copperhead bite, the doctor said, but many have required operations to remove dead tissue.
Chris' injuries could have been much worse if she panicked and didn't grab the snake, he said. Had it bit her on the neck, it might have hit a large artery. The farther a snake bite is from the heart, the better.
She used to have a pet green snake, till it escaped. It used to curl up on her fingers.
It's not clear how the copperhead got up in the air. Copperheads don't normally climb trees. Besides, there really aren't any trees close to where Chris was riding.
Chris said she'd seen what she thought was a pipe and had started around it, just before the snake hit her. She assumes the snake got caught in the back wheel of her bike, which has no fender, and was thrown onto the back of her neck.
She said she's learned some lessons from the whole experience.
"It has made me think of life more, of how much life is really precious to you.
"And you really don't want to mess with poisonous snakes."
by CNB