Bite Club

I still laugh about that episode when i think back on it , but at the time i wasnt laughing lol . Speaking of laughing at others my friend has a shop in Raleigh. They had bought a 100% hetalbino retic about 9 ft and his helper was holding one day now they had been told it was rather " nippy" ( i dont call a retic of anything less then a newborn baby "Nippy") Well we were sitting there Bs'ing one afternoon and teasing him that she was gonna pop him if he wasnt careful .. not 5 mins later she turned a whacked him real good on the face got him from his chin to his hairline nice double row print of teeth he now wont touch that snake at all lol

its not everday but pretty darn close..lol..Seems like most of my snakes like the taste of my blood.I have been tagged and get tagged just about everytime I get the white lips out to clean cages or what have you.They are in the 5 to 6 foot range.My carpets bite me once everytime I get them out.And I have 2 het male ball pythons that bite and strike and are some nasty lil guys.You can slid there tubs out and they are posed and ready..lol..Just about everything I own bites me from time to time.I wish I could firgure out why they like to bite the hand that feeds and cares for them.I think out of all of my snakes there is only a few that havent tagged me..But the way i look at it keeps me on my toes..And faithful.Cause the nicest snake can tagg you.And I am sure I will suffer many more bites but I guess you just kinda get used to the risk..AND I WOULDNT TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING...lol....The kids love to watch me get the more aggressive snakes out so they can count the bites or the teeth marks.I wonder if they are trying to tell me something?..lol

LOL , nice thread. and as for me, lets just say never walk bare footed in a pen full of hungrey redfoots.

Lets see, had a chocolate banana king that would latch onto the thumb every time she was handled, a spotted python that would act all innocent and then munch the back of a hand, had a young SIG boa grab a tendon on the underside of the wrist...got a baby ball python once that hammered me every time I reached into the tank regardless, startled a female corn once (ooh, didn't even break skin), had a 6' burm hit around the wrist, had a 10' burm stop mid-strike at my face (thought I was the wife, who he hated), and most recently got nailed by an 8'+ brown water python...now that one was a bit rough as I was backing out of her range and she hit me on the end of her lunge, so it wound up tearing around the thumb and palm of the hand nicely.

Guess with this kind of record, hots are definitely not in the forseeable future. Although, I have gotten much better at keeping a hook handy when working with known/possible biters. Just makes for a good practice.

David

Everything bites me.

Constantly.

Things which aren't known for biting will automatically take one look at me and latch on... Animals that don't have mouths will try to crash into me and injure me. My hands and arms when looked at under a blacklight are nothing but solid patches of very very tiny scars with a few larger ones cutting through the mess of little ones.

The animal bite which I had bleed the most is on my right arm, just inside and below my elbow... I was working pet-retail during December... busy store, multiple employees, everyone running around and helping as many people as they could at any given point... It was the kind of situation where someone working would get stuck with four or five people no matter where they were, customers were waiting for cages to be unlocked and fish to be scooped.

I got hit up by a crowd of people demanding hamsters, rabbits and guinea pigs and was essentially helping them all at once, answering questions as they were shouted and making a mental list of what to box up prior to taking the entire crowd to go pick out supplies... I crouched down underneath the cabinet where the small animal boxes were kept and had to lean under a good ways to open a few bundles with my pocket knife... I had my right hand gripping the cabinet door and was inside it pretty much up to my waist.

I feel a small pinch on my arm, no massive pain, just a pinch. I assume I had either given myself a splinter or been bitten by one of the animals which was loose in the store (some intentional, some not), so I continue what I was doing until I had the bixes of the appropriate sizes in a flat stack and then I pull myself out and look down at my arm to see if it was a tokay or a splinter and find...

... A toddler. I'm not real good with the age of little kids until they're old enough to be human but he couldn't have been more than two or three, maybe four on the outside but I kind of doubt it. He had his lips curled back and he was chewing on my arm with his front teeth, pinching the skin between them. He had already broken skin (and a small vein) and there was blood GUSHING down his chin, covering his overalls and collecting in a dinner plate sized puddle on the floor at his feet.

I stared at him. He stared back. I stared at him. He ground his teeth together, releasing a new wave of my blood onto his chin. Had it been someone's animal... a dog or cat or ferret or... anything really, I could have simply removed it but people get funny when their kids are concerned and I really didn't want to end up being sued for smacking the little monster in it's head so I waited and looked around a bit for whoever owned it, still crouched down on one knee with him chewing.

His mother was all of maybe three feet away, talking on her cell phone and completely oblivious to what the kid was doing as she chattered away nonstop. I had to clear my throat a few times before she glanced down and saw her rabid offspring trying it's best to chew straight down to the bone... She cocked her head to the side and held the cell phone to her ear with her shoulder, STILL TALKING, bent down and grabbed the kid under his arms, pulling him away. Except he didn't let go, so she's holding him horizontaly in the air and TUGGING to get him off... He doesn't actually stop biting, but the chunk of skin he was working on finally ripped loose and he was pulled away. As I grab a roll of paper towels and shove them onto my bleeding arm, she puts the kid down and quickly leaves the store, still on the phone, before I can even ask her if her kid has had it's shots and if the local animal control office has a file on him.

It was too busy for me to leave, being the season that it was and because I was responsible for sales numbers and didn't even usually work out on the floor, so I stayed at work, taking only a fifteen minute break to give myself dental floss stitches with my left hand while bleeding all over my office.

A lot of the herp bites hurt more, a few resulted in larger scars but that one bled the most... I'm a wirey guy and all the veins in my arm are right under the skin... he hooked one of the smaller but still visible ones good and laid it wide open.

Seamus,

I hear ya on everything wanting to bite ya.I can pick up the nicest snake and it will get me one way or another.Heck my breeder rats bite me,the pair of sugargliders have drawn blood also..I wish I could firgure out why everything likes to see me bleed..lol

I was loitering at Ken Foose's shop a couple Thanksgivings ago... he handed me a set of keys and let me prod things if I wanted to.

I don't know how many people have been to his shop, but to the right when you enter is a double row of tanks, with the upper row set back away from the lower ones. The upper row usually contains smaller lizards, lotta geckos generally.

The center of the store has a few mammal cages, then some shelves with product on them, then more reptile enclosures...

I'm only five seven, so I had to use the foot stool to get into the upper row of cages easily and immediately behind me were these big four by four heavy glass mammal enclosures full of rabbits. I was checking out a few of the terrestrial geckos that he had and opened the door to the enclosure holding neonate pictus geckos. One of them darted out from under a hide and latched onto my fingertip as I was reaching in, gave a shake like a terrier trying to kill a rat and then darted back under the half log. This was an animal that was all of maybe an inch and a quarter from snout to vent and noted for their easy going temperments, trying to murder me for invading it's space.

I laughed so hard that I fell off the stool backwards and hit my funnybone on the corner of the rabbit cage, so I guess the gecko was pretty successful.

Sugar gliders hurt though... They've got pretty nasty chompers for something that's supposed to eat insects and tree sap, I don't envy you there...

Anyone else get the reaction where anything that doesn't bite you has to deficate on you instead? Out of the two, which would you rather have happen? Personally I'd rather bleed a little than spend the rest of the day smelling of digested rat.

Sounds like my luck Seamus..And i would much rather be bitten anyday of the week as to have crap sprayed on me.I have one carpet that bites and sprays and then the white lip will musk ,bite and spray..Heck they say you need to give blood from time to time.I say I share plenty but I also donate blood the wright way...

i took a bite oto the nose by a brooks king. was using a large butter dish to feed him and i peeked in to see if he was done (without disturbing him) little turd chomped down and latched right on the end of my nose.... yeah nice to go to work with a bite on your nose and someone asks what happened oh nothing just a snake bite LMAO........ iv gotten bite a few times but everything that can bite will try.. it doesnt matter all of them try... my husband wil;l be holfing on i walk by they try and biote me as i walk by... anything.....
only thing that tries to get my husband is the meanest snake ever a male bci.. tries every time but hasnt connected yet..... our male blue beauty has a fascination with trying to bite russ's package.... he has managed to bite and catch his jeans but no "flesh" thus far LOL needless to say russ is very careful with that one

Originally posted by wilomn
I'm lucky, I guess in that I rarely get nipped anymore. But, I've been keeping and working with snakes for many years. From catching and keeping when I was a kid to having my shop and breeding to working with an importer. I've had hundreds of thousands of snakes go through my hands. Pretty cool actually.

I've been bitten by many different species. I had on ruby eye cal king bit me as she was pipping her egg. Still got her and she's almost 6 feet long. I still have to be careful of her when she's hungry. I've had the big burms and boas bounce off a food item and hit my hand thinking it was a rat or snake too, lots of fun there as well.

The weirdest bite I had was a dumerils boa I'd had for about 10 years. Sweet snake. I was holding him one day and he just reached up and nailed my cheek. Out of nowhere and not really a full on bite, just got me with one side of his mouth but he had to mean it. Then he was fine again.maybe the dumeril was just trying to give you a little kiss :-)

There have been countless little snake bites over the years, corns and kings and rosies and gophers and coachwhips and on and on.

I can say there are far fewer I've held and NOT been bitten by than have bitten me. Of course, now that I've said that my next round of cleaning and feeding should be fun.

Wes Pollock