My harlequin snake bite:
I was in the KZN Drakensberg with friends – they were all doing normal stuff (ie not herping) so I wandered off and flicked a few rocks. On about my fourth rock I exposed a SHS which was very quickly trying to make its escape. The books talk about bites being very rare, because of its small gape and reluctance to bite, and it did have a very small head, so I simply picked it up. I wanted to get a pic (for SARCA) but had nothing to put it in, so carried it in my hand back to where my camera was. The ground was uneven, so it may have got a little shaken as I climbed down, which could have agitated it. As I was going, I felt a scraping feeling on the fleshy outer palm, below my baby finger. I stopped walking and watched as the snake very slowly tried to grip my hand with its mouth. At the time I thought this was cute, as I didn’t think it had any chance of succeeding and it didn’t ‘seem’ upset or very enthusiastic with its attempts. I was surprised when I felt a sharp pain on my hand as the fangs punctured the skin! As I watched, I realized it wasn’t going to release and actually kept chewing my hand so I had to pull its mouth off me. I continued to my camera. Almost immediately the bite site started burning a little and after 10 minutes, a numbness started to spread from the bite across most of my hand. After 30 minutes my hand started swelling and started to ache. This swelling increased and the aching pain increased in intensity and spread throughout the day. By the evening my whole arm was sore (6hrs after the bite) and I finally succumbed and took painkillers. The next day, my whole arm was sore, my hand pretty swollen (particularly the half closer to the bite) so I could barely bend my outer three fingers and the glands in my armpit were very sensitive and sore. I had to take painkillers a couple times during the day. And I just didn’t feel too good in general – lethargic and a bit weak. I had a slight headache, but have these fairly often normally, so couldn’t be sure if that was a symptom. From here on, the pain and swelling gradually subsided, with the pain mostly gone three days after the bite. Some stiffness remained surrounding the bite site for a couple weeks.
What was interesting was that as I held the snake for photos, it repeatedly tried to bite me very slowly, without striking and with specific provocation (ie a sudden movement).It would just move up to a part of my hand, open its mouth and slowly try and ‘press’ it on to the hand. It tried this 5-6 times while I was photographing it, but when I realized this is what it was trying to do, it was easy to avoid further bites. The second pic actually shows it as it moved to bite me again. An interesting experience!
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beautiful Rob, thanks for sharing this with us.
