Rattlesnake bite at Lowe's

I read this HERE, but I swear I've seen a similar story elsewhere some time ago.

Lowe's Customer Bitten by Rattlesnake
Wed Apr 14, 7:50 PM ET Add Strange News - AP to My Yahoo!



BROKEN ARROW, Okla. - The large trees section at a Lowe's store looks a lot like a forest, but customers don't expect to see dangerous fauna living in the flora. A customer rummaging through the trees at a Lowe's store here was bitten on the hand by an 18-inch eastern diamondback rattlesnake, a company spokeswoman said Wednesday.



"The gentleman thought he had hit his hand on a thorn but they discovered it was a snakebite," said Chris Ahearn, a spokeswoman for the Mooresville, N.C.-based hardware chain.


A relative shopping with the man Sunday killed the snake, and they brought it with them when the customer was taken to a hospital to ensure proper treatment for the poison, Ahearn said.


A hospital official would not provide information without the man's name. Ahearn would not identify the customer.


The eastern diamondback rattlesnake is not one of the five rattlesnake species native to Oklahoma, said David Walker, naturalist supervisor at the Oklahoma City Zoo. Its natural range is in the Southeast.


The rattler can grow as long as 7 feet and often gives warning bites that deliver no venom.


The snake probably made its way to Broken Arrow with the trees, which were shipped in from Tennessee. Ahearn said she knows of no other similar instances at Lowe's.


Store employees immediately scoured the trees for other animals after the snakebite and found none, Ahearn said.


"We feel like this is an isolated incident, but we are taking it very seriously," she said. "We continue to watch our garden centers for uninvited guests."

Yeppers! Same basic story, different location...


Wal-Mart snake bite suspected

But now ...

Who knows, if the Lowes incident is true, but it seems kind of fishy to me.

Pulling link(s) from local TV news stations. Haven't watched the coverage yet, but I am interested as it's only about 90 miles from here.

KJRH TV-News channel 2

KTUL TV-News channel 8\

Don't know if the other stations have coverage, local CBS affiliate didn't have anything immediately available and didn't spend a whole lot of time looking for Fox or UPN stations.

David

If you recall, the other incident I cited above was covered in much the same way by the local news affiliates. So, the only thing I can draw from that is that it may true that the report was made, but that it may not be true that the event happened as described. Does that make any sense at all???

To be honest, I would be a whole lot more willing to accept this story as plausible if it hadn't been a relative that killed the snake in question. If another shopper, a stranger to the bitten man, had seen or killed the snake, then there would have been an added layer of credibility here.

It may very well have occurred exactly as described, but I find it a bit difficult to believe, given how ticked off an EDB would have been as the store employees were unloading the trees in the first place. Even if one of THEM did not get bitten, I can't believe there was no rattling going on as those trees were set up into place.

Who knows . . .?

First of all, what was an EDB doing in a TREE? They aren't generally very arboreal snakes. While they have some climbing ability, those little trees they sell at Lowe's aren't thick, and this time of year, are mostly devoid of foliage anyway, so it would be pretty hard to conceal even a neonate EDB! Second, I didn't know that Eastern Diamondbacks were native to TENNESSEE, where the trees came from, either-I can find no information which included TN as part of their range. Timbers, yes, EDB's, no. This just sounds suspicially like the old Urban Legends I used to hear while growing up, of somebody being bitten by a rattlesnake while sifting through butterbeans(or peas...or collards...or some other veggies)in a well-known supermarket chain, AND the one about kids getting bitten and dying after playing the ball pits at some fast-food restaurant. The similar tale of a snake bite at Wal-Mart makes it even more suspect.

pitbulllady