I've been working with animals most of my life, stables, dairy farms, raised parrot like birds in Mexico, keeping/breeding herps and owned a pet shop. I have come to the conclusion that getting bit is part of the game. I'm not at all afraid of any animal biting me which is why I
won't keep any sort of hots.
Hydrogen peroxide is my friend not only for treating post bite but I have found nothing that works as well for removing those that just don't want to let go. Keep your alcohols, mouthwash, hot and cold water. Hydrogen peroxide works everytime and right now and is not dangerous to the animal. It reacts to the bacteria in their mouth and starts foaming. It's also useful with those persistent biters. Once they've bitten you and had a HP treatment just wash your hands with it before handling that particular herp again. They won't bite, kind of like a dog with a toad. Won't do it twice the lizards will still tail whip you though. Does that count they can hurt like he!!?
Lizards starting from small cute ones and working on up.
Anoles
baby Beardies
Leo gex
Fattail gex
Tokay gex, evil but beautiful
Mt. Horned Dragon, gave me a staph infection.
Adult beardies
Baby Nile monitors
Baby Sav monitors
Sub Adult Niles
2' Sav, this is where I learned the effectiveness of HP. 20 minutes of this #*$Y(@# hanging off my thumb, hot water, cold water, mouthwash, no good. HP and it let go right
NOW Fortunately I had his body trapped between my arm and body so no death roll.
5' Asian water monitor, near escape from actually latching on, mostly slight lacerations.
Numerous Tegus.
Funny how ppl would bring nasty lizards to my shop and ask if I wanted them. Duh! NO! How am I supposed to sell your nasty lizard? Turns out many of them were just dumba$$e$ that should never had lizards and had no idea how to handle them properly.
Snakes
Garters, go figure they bite, musk and poop all over you.
Water snakes, see garters.
Corns, had one female that thought she was a monitor and would just gnaw on me, twisting turning trying for all she was worth to tear my arm/hand off everytime I had to handle her.
Kings not many varieties of kings I haven't kept and most have bitten me at one time or another. I had a Tarahumara who must have been releated to the above corn.
Numerous Pits, keep pits and you're going to be bitten, deal with it.
Eastern Indigo, totally my fault she would eat and ashtray if it smelled like mice. Didn't wash before handling her. Guess what dumba$$.
Redtail boas, several times. Worst was a 9' female I had just gotten and she was still freaked and cage aggressive, nailed my hand good and I had no ink to rub in, dang.
Baby burms Fortunately never my big ones.
Baby Tics
Baby yellow 'condas
Black rats
Yellow rats
Gray rats
Numerous Carpets
Most recently I've gotten into Cribos. Baby cribs are high strung and scared, they strike a lot.
I have to say most baby snakes are kind of cute when they try to bite. Do they really think this is going to save them from the "big, bad human?"
I'm sure there are some I missed but you get the idea.
My scariest snake experience was being wrapped by my 16' female burm. When I got her and her mate as rescues they both had mouth rot. I had treated them and was inspecting her mouth for healing before resuming putting her back on feed. She was about sick and tired of this crap and wrapped all the way up my arm. I yell to my now ex wife to come and help. She sees this and says, "hang on I need to get a picture of this first." She thought it was funny and I do now but at the time my arm was going cold and numb and I was real leary of releasing her head. I finally put my arm with snake into her enclosure just before I lost muscle control and at first she put on the "death" squeeze but soon just crawled back into her cage. I don't keep big snakes anymore. Go figure.
Turtles.
When I was a teen I caught a Wood turkle. Sucker bit me on the neck and I was real lucky it didn't rip me open, right on the jugular. I would have bled out before I could have gotten help.
RES
Musk turtles
numerous varieties of box turtles
I've learned keep body parts away from turtle mouths, those suckers hurt.
Birds. Having raised, kept, traded in birds mostly parrot like birds it's all part of the territory.
Budgies and cockatiels. Somehow these always seem to find the most tender spots, webs of fingers and the cuticle area around fingernails. Cute my a$$ evil I tell you.
Parrotlets
DY head amazons
YN amazons
Lilac Crown
Mex Red heads
Name a conure, I've been bitten by them,
Quakers see cockatiels. Pure evil
Macaws from minis up to big Hyacinths. Worst was a Scarlet that would act all perch friendly then when you picked it up it would bite up your arm and go at your face. 30 years later and you can still see the puncture wound on the inside of my upper arm.
Cockatoos Goffins, lesser and greater sulfurs, Moluccans, Some of the worst pressure bites along with Macaws.
I raised Toucans also. These are some of the sweetest birds when handraised and I love them. But you can't go barefoot around them, they like toes.
I had a Rhode Island Red rooster that I got as a chick. I had an iguana rescue that had lived in a cage with love birds, evil little birds BTW. The iguana was depressed because it missed it's cage mates. I couldn't afford a love bird at the time so I got some baby chicks. It worked, happy iggy and it ate and lived a nice long life and learned to live without birds in time. So I move the rooster in with my chickens. Everytime I would go in to feed and collect eggs this so and so would attack and bite. He made a great stew.
Geese, keep your Pits and Rotts geese are the best attack dogs.
Raptors.
As a hawk bum (falconer) and also as a certified federal bird bander I've been bitten and worse by raptors. If you think any of the above bites hurt you really need to get in the grasp of a big, pissy raptor's talons. They can go right through 1/4" thick leather gloves and through the skin.
Climbing Great Horned owl nests to band babies the females most often would attack you from the back, make sure you wear several heavy sweatshirts.
Mammals
Numerous Shetland ponies. What is with these evil creatures and biting?
1 donkey. I thought she was cute at the time. Evil bitch.
Mice, meh.
Rats,
Gerbils. only good gerbil is a dead gerbil
Degus, see gerbils
Chins, see gerbils
Hamster regular and dwarf, see gerbils
Rabbits. Are you kidding me cute little bunnies bite? Yes indeedy. When in high school my girlfriend had a couple rabbits. I reach in to pet one and she leaps across the cage and wide open mouth takes my hand into it and chomps me. Shocked the poop out of me.
Then she tells me be careful she bites. Ya' think?
Sugar gliders, see gerbils.
Anyone seeing a trend here with me and rodents? I have no problem feeding any rodent to my snakes. Don't even try to tell me how fricking cute they are. Evil incarnate and snake food on the hoof.
Ferrets. Has anyone ever seen such well designed snake food as a ferret?
Arachnids
Tucking my oldest son in one night in Mexico I flip his mosquito net down and go to tuck it in and a scorpion nails me right on the back of my hand. More worried about my son than the scorp sting. I drag him back out of bed and tear it apart looking for the scorp. Never did find it but felt better about putting my son back in bed. Meanwhile my hand goes numb and swells up. That was the worst of it. Healed in about a week.
I'm sure I've left some out but I think you all get the picture.
Hopefully some will find this entertaining, hopefully humorous and totally tongue in cheek. Like I said getting bitten is all a part of it.
Was bitten as recently as last night by one of my female Carpets. I was putting them back in their cage after feeding in the tubs. Bellatrix is a little nippy as I was putting her sister, Nymphadora back Bella decides I need a little lesson in Carpet care. She's funny and I love her.
Happy holidays to one and all, be safe, happy and healthy and give thanks to whomever or whatever you believe in for all your many blessings.
Man I sure hope none of this violates the TOS.
Linear Mode
