BEHEADED rattlesnake sends man to hospital

[charlie and algernon]

PROSSER, Wash. - Turns out, even beheaded rattlesnakes can be dangerous.

<snip>

Anderson and his 27-year-old son, Benjamin, pinned the snake with an irrigation pipe and cut off its head with a shovel. A few more strikes to the head left it sitting under a pickup truck.

“When I reached down to pick up the head, it raised around and did a backflip almost, and bit my finger,” Anderson said. “I had to shake my hand real hard to get it to let loose.”

His wife insisted they go to the hospital, and by the time they arrived at Prosser Memorial Hospital 10 minutes later, Anderson’s tongue was swollen and the venom was spreading. He then was taken by ambulance 30 miles to a Richland hospital to get the full series of six shots he needed.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20212558/


that seems like a sci-fi movie in the making.

Attack of the Headless Snakes!

[cobalt1999]

1. an old saying down here in Florida

"The head of a decapitated snake can still bite you until sundown"

Like most old sayings, there is an element of truth in them.

[skygazer]

2. Oh, yeah, they can do that

I used to have a lot of rattlers at my old place - they liked to hide in my hay when they weren't lying around in the sun. I kept an old axe handle nearby to beat on the bales and drive them out before I put my hands in.

I regularly decapitated them with a flat-bladed shovel but always made sure to smash the head after - didn't want my dogs to end up with a snakehead in their face.

[SouthoftheBorderPaul]

3. That happened to my best friend's grandfather

when he was a kid in backwoods North Carolina. He figured (wrongly, as it turns out) that the snake's head would be harmless, got too close, and the head bit his foot. Being backwoods NC in he 40s (?), his daddy made him drink a bottle of whiskey and then cut a hunk of flesh off of his heel.