Continued................(April, 2011)

About three days later, I made a trip into the nearest town which is Congress, Arizona, about 10 miles away. I got gas and stopped at the Family Dollar store which is the only store that one can shop, literally-only store, other than the grocey.  On my way back, up  the first hill with a sharp curve at the top (mountain should I say).  here come my son who was not coming into town that day.(last week of March.).  He was going at a dangerously high raate of speed and his dog patches was with him. I suspected what had happened.  I turned my car around and headed back to town.  I went past the fire station which is on the main road.  As I suspected, there was his jeep parked there with patches(his dog)in it.  I went in and sure enough, there he was laying on a gurney with one of his jeans legs cut off.  He had gotten bit by a rattler.  The firemen EMS (EMT) are trained for this type of situation.  They had already taken blood, and drawn circles around each fang puncture and on uppper and lower of that they had drawn circles around his lower calf.  They measure around these to check for swelling because one way to know if there is venom in the bite.  They were checking his vitals, blood pressure, etc. and asking questions on how he was feeling.  He was walking down a mountain and heard a rattle, seen nothing, but he stopped.  Then he heard another rattle and he jumped aside.  He did not feel the bite at all. The rattlers have teeth like small or smaller than needles where the venom comes from.  They had called the EMS which is like an ambulance to drive him to the hospital.  They also had an air-vac hellicopteron stand-by.  They had to draw more vials of blood to send to the hospital with him.  I parked his jeep where I was instructed to do so and loaded up patches in my car and followed the EMS to the Wickenburg hospital.emergency where they took the vials of blood immediately to the lab to check for venom.  Everry hour then to three hours they took more blood to be checked for venom content.  They also kept measuring his lower calf for swelling.  Records was kept of the measurements from the first measurement.  He never did get any swelling.  They kept him in the emergency room all night checking every three hours for venom in his blood.  He got lucky this time, none showed up.  The older snakes sometimes bite and do not release all its venom because they reallize by the taste and smell that you are not on their regular diet as a mouse or rat would be; whereas the younger snakes will bite and release all their venom in one bite of their prey.  He also got an antibiotic shot.  The doctor said it is better to have the bite farther away from the heart.  He also said venom doesn't always show up until days later.  The Poison Control Center kept calling him to check on him for days later and weeks later, to make sure he was still doing alright.  It was called a dry bite because there was no venom.