BURST
Landen Spittal, 15, has never been afraid of snakes. Dangling the occasional garter snake in front of his mom Andrea was always good for a jump-scare.
So last week, when his dad Colin picked up an interesting snake while the two were doing yard work at their home in Keremeos, he called Landen over to check it out. Landen leaned in and reached for the snake.
The bite was instant, on Landen’s hand. It was also potentially fatal.
Colin was holding a rattlesnake.
It hadn’t made a sound.
Now the family is speaking out in the hopes of helping raise awareness about snakes, rattlesnakes in particular, and what to do if you see one or get bitten by one.
“We made a few mistakes,” said Andrea, “and we’ve learned a lot. We don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
Andrea, a nail tech, was inside the house doing her own nails when the bite occurred.
“They (snakes) scare the crap out of me. You either think snakes are interesting and fascinating or you totally loathe them,” she said.
Colin, who grew up in Scotland, falls into the “fascinated-by-them” camp. Of course, they don’t have rattlesnakes in Scotland.
“I saw the snake slithering out towards me,” said Colin, who was weed-whacking at the time. “I grabbed it because we’d been playing with garter snakes.”
After the bite, Colin alerted Andrea by phone. Her first thought was, “What?, then, how?”
“Then I said this is a medical emergency,” Andrea said. She met her son and husband at the door, and they left immediately for the Keremeos Medical Centre.
In hindsight, she would have called 911: “We were told later you have four hours max to get treatment,” she said.
At the medical centre, staff immediately ordered Landen be transported to Penticton Regional Hospital by ambulance.
In the ambulance with his son, reality was sinking in for Colin.
“His hand was swollen and blue, the swelling was going up his arm, his mouth was numb and tingling. I was trying to be tough, but I was pretty scared for him,” Colin said.
At Penticton Regional Hospital, seven medical staff were waiting at the door, including a doctor who was “in total panic mode,” said Andrea. “He knew how serious this could be.”
Staff immediately got Landen on fluids, and began administering antivenin, while marking the progress of the swelling on his arm with a pen. Landen spent three days in intensive care, and had 14 vials of antivenin in total.
“It took a few days to process everything, and we had many reflective conversations,” said Andrea. “The big takeaway was I knew the dangers of rattlesnakes, and I just assumed everyone knew about them.”
Growing up in the Okanagan, where the Northern Pacific Rattlesnake is common, she had received snake and reptile education in school, when wildlife handlers visited her classroom. One had slithered out from under their chicken coop the year before, and they had it relocated by an expert. It didn’t seem like a big deal.
Colin grew up in Scotland, and later moved to northern B.C., she said: “He knew very little about rattlesnakes.”
Of course, he wouldn’t have picked it up if he had heard or seen the rattle on its tail, but rattlers don’t always make noise, according to Wildsafe B.C. The Northern Pacific Rattlesnake is a protected species, and found in the Southern Interior.
Andrea said she takes responsibility as well.
“I never had that serious conversation about snakes with the family,” she said.
She hopes everyone learns what her family learned the hard way: “Don’t pick any snake up,” said Andrea. “Especially the rattly ones.”
According to Wildsafe B.C., about five people are bitten by rattlesnakes every year in the province, but based on what staff at the Penticton hospital told her, she believes that number could be higher.
As for Landen, he’s home and “back to being a regular teenage boy,” said Andrea.
With one exception: He won’t be giving her any more jump-scares, at least not with snakes.