Ask the ExecDir of nonprofit wildlife care facility

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Great story and a great thread! Thanks!

My experience with mambas was very similar to yours. Once, many many sawgrass seasons ago, I worked part time for a major animal importer in Miami. I was young, stupid, and routinely caught and sold wild rattlers and moccasins to Bill Haast at the old Miami Sepentarium. He taught me to work some of his cobras and other “hot” snakes, and I thought I knew everything. So the day I was tasked with changing the water for the black mambas at the importer, I thought little of it. I looked into the first cage and saw that the snake was inside its hide box. So I slid open the plexiglass front of the old Neodesha cage far enough to accommodate the water bowl. Then I reached in with my hook and drew the bowl toward me. Before I could say “Holy shit, that’s an eight foot snake!!” it was out of the hide, up my hook, across my shoulders, and into the cages on the other side of the room. I felt myself all over, especially around the neck, but I wasn’t bitten. I yelled “Help! I’ve got a loose mamba!” and some other worker ran quickly over and closed the room’s door. From the outside. That wasn’t exactly the kind of help I wanted.

It took me probably 15 minutes of really frightening back and forth chasing to finally corral that animal and return it to the cage. But of course, I completely forgot to change the water. It had again retreated into the hide, which was an old school wooden box with a hole about 3” x 3” in one side. I found a brick, and thought I’d use it to blockade the snake in the hide. I again slid open the door, this time reaching inside with the brick, aimed at the hole. This time there was no hook, and the snake went right up my arm. I remember looking into its open mouth as it passed my cheek at Mach 6, and thinking the interior wasn’t really so much black as dark, dark umber. Funny the things that go through your mind when you expect to die.

Needless to say, I didn’t, although I richly deserved to. This time I changed the water before I searched for the snake. Ten minutes later I was finally finished with Number One. There were five more to go. I went outside and smoked a few cigarettes and had a good shake. Then I found a piece of wood plank about 4 inches square, and a length of mop handle. I got a nail and attached the plank perpendicular to the end of the mop handle. Then I went back to my mambas. If the animal was in the hide, I slowly and carefully opened the door just enough to slip my new tool inside, then closed the door to the width of the mop handle. I pushed the plank up against the hide box’s doorway and held it firmly in place while I opened the door and swapped the old water bowl for a new one. Then retreated in reverse. One snake wasn’t in the hide, so I hung a bright reflector on the cage and worked the other ones first. By then this snake had retreated from the glare into the hide, and I began the same procedure. Turns out, a 5 foot black mamba is about the diameter of a mop handle, and fits through that sized opening. So once more I had one up my arm and across my neck, and another merry chase around the room.

Why I wasn’t bitten that day, I just cannot guess. The animals were certainly aggressive enough when I recaptured them, and bit avidly and repeatedly at me, my hook, and everything nearby. In hand they were powerful, and writhed with great intensity while trying to distort their mouths enough to hook one fang or the other into my fingers. And fast? Damn! Cobras are pretty slow, methodical, and predictable. Rattlers, especially in warm weather, strike swiftly and unpredictably. But mambas are like a lightning bolt. Zap, zig, zag! And they would come at me across the floor faster and with more determination than any snake I’ve ever handled. Hooding fourteen foot king cobras are nothing in comparison. That day cured me of my desire to own a black mamba. (But I did eventually try the greens. Pretty much the same, but faster and maybe a tad less aggressive. Still scary.)

42

I thought that it was a myth that bats were asymptomatic carriers of rabies. I could swear I read in somethingorother from BCI that rabies makes bats sick the same as dogs or cats.

43

Doc, to be honest I’m not a bat expert. I probably know only enough to be dangerous. But as I understand it, there are lots of species of bats, and nobody is really sure how rabies operates in most of them. We do know that bats and rabies are funky in other ways. For instance, there are several instances in the literature of people who have contracted active rabies (and later died) when the only exposure they or their families can reconstruct was an instance where a bat was flying around in their bedroom. Flying around. Insectivorous bats, not blood drinking vampire bats. No bites noted by any of the people involved. No direct contact at all. And still, the person died of rabies. So I am really extra cautious regarding bats.

Also, for the sake of other readers, let me note that in species noted for asymptomatic rabies, not all infected individuals will be asymptomatic. Some, perhaps even most, will display symptoms in the normal course of the disease. Others though will not.

So if a person is bitten by a dog or domestic cat, the animal can be quarantined. If it does not show symptoms within a relatively short time, the person can skip the painful and expensive “post exposure series” of shots because the animal can be definitively ruled “uninfected”. But with the possibly-asymptomatic species, quarantine is worthless since the animal may or may not show symptoms even if it is infected and infective. Microscopic examination of brain tissue is the only definitive test. If the animal is not available for testing, the wisest course of action is to take the post-exposure series.

As a courtesy to our local health department, I used to euthanize and decapitate such animals upon request, then send the heads off for determination. I was careful, and wore double gloves, but the surgery on small animals was pretty routine and I didn’t wear a mask. So one day an older couple showed up at our facility with a raccoon they had “rescued” and kept in their utility room for almost a week. They both had scratches and bites on their arms and legs from the critter. As is my usual routine, I read them the “rabies riot act”. In part this is a cover-my-ass because I don’t want anyone afterward (or their next of kin) to say I didn’t warn them. And these were really nice people who were just trying to help the animal. It had no symptoms, but I told them all the scary stuff anyway. They went home, thought it over, spoke with their doctor, and then decided they wanted the animal tested. So I put it to sleep, did the decapitation, sent the head to the health department’s lab, and next day left on a trip.

Six days later I was southbound from New York, fresh from a wonderful behind-the-scenes visit to the American Museum of Natural History. My cell phone rang, and it was my office. They had heard from the lab and the raccoon was positive. So we saved those people’s lives. Yay. But as I drove along, I began to feel lousy. Achy, feverish, and mentally out of sorts. My subconscious was screaming RABIES! My conscious brain was assuring me that I hadn’t been exposed, I wore gloves, nothing splashed in my eyes. Subconscious repeated, more emphatically, RABIES!!! Conscious brain argued it was too soon for symptoms, my funk and sore throat was from the New Jersey air I’d been living in the past few days. RABIES!!! RA-A-A-A-A-BIES!!! My brain was screaming as I drove past the turnoff for Bethesda. TURN HERE!! BE THE FIRST PERSON TO SURVIVE RABIES SYMPTOMS!!! WHO ELSE COULD POSSIBLY SAVE YOU!!! TURN!!!

I resisted. But when I got home, I called the health department and told them they would need to find someone else to do their decapitations for them.

44

Dan, great mamba story. You were braver than me. After that adventure at the lab, we decided to cage the black mambas individually in small cages that would fit in the lab refrigerator. Each mamba got cooled down before we extracted venom. After a little while at 40 F, they were about as docile as banded kraits.

Pretty cool that you worked with Bill Haast. The guy who owned the lab I worked was jealous of and hated Bill, because Haast was semi-famous and our owner wanted to be.

45

Three black mambas up your arm in one day. That’s got to be a record for someone still living. Great stories!

46

Crotalus, not brave. As I said above, stupid. Ahh, the innocence of youth! I too have used the chiller technique and it is indeed a wise measure to employ. But (1) I didn’t think of it then, (2) I don’t think there was a refrigerator big enough on premises, and (3) those damn big old cages would have been a pain to drag around the building. At any rate, you were the smart one!

Haast was a genuine character. Last time I saw him was three or four years before his death (at 100, for anyone else reading). I brought him some coral snakes, which he always loved. He had quite a collection of all different taxa at his “Miami Serpentarium” in Punta Gorda, FL and he still milked snakes every day. He had an enormous commercial freeze dryer, and only (or primarily) shipped dried product. By then he had logged about 157 (? my memory isn’t clear) bites. He said he didn’t remember either, so he asked Nancy, and she provided the statistic. Nancy also showed me the chest freezers with literal milk jugs full of venom. One freezer held, along with other contents, at least 6 gallon milk jugs of king cobra venom. And one little stoppered vial, labeled on a paper label in a very neat hand in what looked to be India ink – water moccasin. Nancy said it was from the very first snake Bill ever milked.

I asked him how frequently he milked any particular snake these days. He replied that it was about three weeks. Oh, I commented, your best production is seen on a three week cycle, ehh? No, he snapped, I have so many snakes it takes me that long to go through them all.

Damn, I’m sorry he’s gone.

lieu, it was two black mambas. One of them (the 8 footer) got two turns :D.

47

Keep the stories coming! This is one of the most interesting threads I have seen. Venomous snakes have always held a facination for me.

Some years ago, my father and I went to Brown County State Park, and in their nature center, was a rattlesnake, maybe 2 feet long, in a large glass tank. My dad was wearing a green shirt, and for whatever reason, that snake fixated on him, following him back and forth. It ignored everyone else around it totally. I have always wondered why, if the color attracted it or what. I KNOW it couldn’t have been looking at my 6’2" father as prey. Any ideas what might have caused this behavior?

48

Thanks for the kind words! I can only guess at what the rattler might have been doing. First I should say that snakes apparently can see both black and white (their retinas have rods) and color (their retinas also have cones). I am not aware of any studies describing the visual spectrum of snake species, either by groups (say, rattlers versus pythons) or by individual species (Mojave Rattler versus Canebrake, or Ball Python versus Burmese) but this may be my failing. If anyone does know, please elucidate.

Snakes do though seem to be able to distinguish wavelengths of light outside of the human visual spectrum. This extends into the infra-red wavelengths, which can also be perceived as heat. In fact, certain snakes including rattlers (and other “pit vipers” like the copperhead) have a special infra-red, or heat, sensing “pit” between their nostril and eye. Some other snakes, like the pythons, also have heat sensing pits, but these are in an array along the mouth line. These pits give the snake an ability to track warm blooded prey even when other wavelengths of light are not available – meaning in total darkness. Some maintain that the snake merely senses the heat signature coming from the prey and discerns the direction and perhaps the distance of the heat source. Others speculate that snakes may be able to form some sort of image with the heat information, similar to the way the eye forms an image from other wavelengths of light. Well, what is really meant is that the brain does so, with data provided by the eyes or, speculatively anyway, from the pits. But you understood :).

Snakes also have very sophisticated olfactory senses. Their “sniffer” isn’t behind their nose like ours is, but instead is on the roof of the mouth. So when they stick out that forked tongue, they are actually collecting olfactory clues. Molecules of scent are collected on the tongue, which is then retracted and touched to the ‘Jacobson’s Organ’ on the roof of the mouth, the scent particles are received, signals go to the brain, and the snake “smells” its environment. But while you can sniff a rose, you have trouble locating the direction from which a scent may originate. The snake though has that forked tongue. So one side or the other may have more scent particles, thus informing the snake which side leads to the source. The snake will keep moving its head back and forth and flicking its tongue, which allows it to track a prey animal by scent alone in the dark through tight quarters, like under a brush pile.

But your Dad’s snake almost certainly wasn’t getting infrared or olfactory cues through the glass. I’m going to guess it was merely seeing in the visual spectrum, and was attracted to the movement. Snakes in captivity become habituated to their routines, and one powerful behavioral modifier is food. Captive animals recognize that someone approaching their cage may be the bearer of food. Perhaps your Dad’s body size and green shirt matched that of a keeper who often fed this snake. They are certainly capable of learning that kind of recognition.

Or maybe it was all just a coincidence ;).