Yeah. I'm seeing evidence of a lot of snakes and spiders this year. I've never seen a venomous snake around. These are all small compost and garden snakes. I find the worm snakes very weird, but they love it here. But if there is a variety of non-venomous snakes, I'd imagine venomous will come into the mix soon enough. I killed a black recluse 2 days ago. I have yet to spray malathion. Each year I keep saying I'll spray, but don't. It may be imperative this year.

I kill spiders in the house if they insist on invading my personal space. DD used to be terrified of them, so we had to keep them away from her. But I tolerate the ones in the doorways, you can see all the things they caught that DIDN'T make it into the house.

I saw a weird...worm? planting tomatoes yesterday. It might have had legs. Long and skinny. 3" long maybe. Light colored. Moved in that "S" style slither. I stabbed it with the garden knife. The halves continued to wiggle. Stabbed more. Smashed with the flat side of the blade. I finally gave up, it kept wiggling, only in smaller pieces. What was it?

The garden is delightfully full of spiders and the garden also is delightfully pest-free for the most part, so Mother Nature's system appears to be working as it should.

It is a whole different thing with black widows and brown recluses though. Even though they are spiders, I don't want them around. I was bitten by a brown recluse once when I was in my mid-20s and it is not an experience I care to repeat.

I don't think Malathion is labeled for use on spiders, but products containing Bifenthrin are, and that includes stuff like Talstar P and Bug-B-Gone. I believe the Bug-B-Gone contains both Bifenthrin and Zeta Cypermethrin, and it is listed for around 250-275 different insects and arachnids (not all insecticides kill spiders and scorpions since they are arachnids), making it a great multipurpose pesticide to have on hand to handle the really tough stuff like black widows, brown recluses and scorpions.

Demon WP is a great pesticide that can be used as a crack and crevice treatment and a barrier treatment around a home. It also is broad-spectrum and can be used for many of the pests that infiltrate homes, including ants, spiders, scorpions and above-ground termites. It might be hard to find in stores but they have it at doyourownpestcontrol.com, which is where I usually order organic fire ant and carpenter ant killers. I haven't used it since it isn't organic, but I think if we needed to use a pesticide as either a barrier treatment or a crack and crevice treatment around our house, this is what I'd use, simply because it is so hard to find good products that kill spiders and scorpions....and I kind of like the idea of it being named Demon.

I was outside earlier using a string trimmer to edge the outside perimeter of the garden and the mosquitoes are horrible this morning. I came inside to find a can of Deep Woods Off to spray on my clothes, and I'm hoping that will be enough because I really don't like to apply it to my skin. I have not yet found a suitable organic mosquito repellent that actually seems to work, which is frustrating. Both last night and this morning, it has been like walking through clouds composed of mosquitoes. Ugh. I hate them and they seem to love me. For some odd reason I do not understand, this year rather than going for a person's torso or limbs, they are going right for faces here at our place. We don't understand it, but it is what it is and we have to deal with it. We have a lot of purple martins around, and plenty of other wild birds, and toads and frogs. I hope they are hungry for skeeters.

Amy, Was is sort of shiny? If so, it could have been a western slender glass lizard. These are legless lizards that look more like snakes than worms though, so that might not have been it.

Western Slender Glass Lizard

Could it have been a worm snake? Do y'all have those there? Or an earth snake? To me, they look like large worms.

Dawn

This was little, like a miniature earth worm, only light colored, almost translucent. I thought centipede or milipede at the time, but I haven't looked them up.

Try pinning a cheap dryer sheet to your hat. It seems to repel mosquitoes. I hate dryer sheets, I only use them for this.

In the past dryer sheets haven't worked for me. I wish they did.

Knock on wood, no mosquito problem here in north central Oklahoma. But the ticks! OMG!!! The ticks are crazy this year at my house. I've come in at night and find 8-10 all over me. Ankles to underarm. I now have DH look on my back with a flashlight and tweezers. Some are tiny-remedy - as small as the period in the newspaper and then others are the regular small ticks.

I'm just about to go NUCLEAR on them and spray the place with malathion - is that the best thing to use? I hate to do it, but I'm so afraid I'm going to get some tick disease from all these bites. I spray Deep Woods on my gardening long sleeved shirt and let it dry before I put it on plus I spray the bottoms of my jeans and socks/shoes, but I'm still getting them. Dawn, will putting duck tape around the bottom of my jeans help??

Anyone have a remedy for the tick bites? After removing the tick and making sure to get the head, mine will swell, get red and just randomly itch like crazy.

When I was younger and birding we got a spray you could treat your clothes with. It lasts a couple of washings. Find it at outdoor type stores. Here's a quote from this article: DEET may work at repelling ticks, but Mather advises it only as a second line of defense. His top recommendation: Wear tick-repellent clothing treated with permethrin, which kills ticks after only five to 30 seconds of exposure. “Permethrin is dried into your clothes,” Mather explains, “and if you purchase treated clothing or have it commercially treated, it can last 70 washings.” (Insect Shield, which produces its own line of insect-repellent apparel, will treat clothing for $8 to $10 an item.) Alternatively, you can treat clothing yourself, though home treatments last for only about four to five washings, Mather says.

My husband has the same problem with tick bites. Our doctor said it just takes a long time for them to heal.

Years ago we had a duck that ate all the bugs in the yard. The dog went from having a lot of ticks to maybe one or two a year. And though I can't claim the duck is the reason, we haven't had a problem since.

The violin pattern is not diagnostic, as other spiders can have similar markings (e.g. cellar spiders and pirate spiders). For definitive identification it is imperative to examine the eyes. While most spiders have eight eyes, recluse spiders have six eyes arranged in pairs (dyads) with one median pair and two lateral pairs. Only a few other spiders have three pairs of eyes arranged in this way (e.g., scytodids)

Wikipedia - Brown recluse spider

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_recluse_spider

Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service - Spiders:
Brown Recluse, Black Widow,
and Other Common Spiders

http://osufacts.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-2294/

Dawn, you do realize those little brown snakes are great to get rid of small insect pests in the garden, like slugs, right ?

You should be glad to see them.

no snakes or spider yet dug up a turtle about the size of a nickel pretty cool little guy. Iam now seeing ants(little black ones) harmless but are getting in the hous & thats not ok usually spray the peremiter 1 a month solves this, i also dont have alot of clutter around the house snakes & spiders don't like to be out in the open like to be under stuff so always be careful when i pick something up, got sting by a scorpion last summer by the wood pile decided to start spraying it. i would like to be more natural/organic but not aroung the house.

dbarron, Of course I know that, but I still don't like snakes. We are surrounded by woodland, so have tons of timber rattlers and they love my garden. I don't like having them around. We have copperheads and other rattlers, but they do not necessary frequent the garden as much as the timber rattlers do. I let the little brown snakes and the green tree snakes and the garter snakes stay, but that doesn't mean I'm happy to see them. Too often. some of the snakes that come into the garden seem to be eating the frogs, toads and lizards that like to live in the garden. I'd rather have frogs, toads and lizards than snakes!

okcst1300, Scorpions drive me nuts. We seem to have lots of them here, but more outside nowadays than inside. We're in a pretty rugged, rural area so we have all sorts of pests...little insect ones and big animal ones, and everything in between.

I try to be as organic as possible, and most of the time it works out well, but every now and then you just do what you have to do to keep the house as pest-free as possible.

Dawn

Hey, Embrothrium, you know what's cool? Locals are frequently immune to bites from native fiddle backs. Me and mine are. Yet, when a gal came from california, one nipped her on the forehead (no idea HOW) and her entire face swelled up including her throat sending her to the hospital. The local hospital almost didn't listen to her because it's so rare to see someone react so badly. She's never been allergic to bugs. She's just not from here.

I LOVE those lizards and now I know what it is. I had been looking for an ID under snakes which didn't provide results. We have the ground worm snakes and I just love them. And ground snakes as well as the common garter snake.

They all burrow through the thick clay eating the grubs and crickets and hoppers on the surface.

Had a brown recluse spider bite about 20 years ago, on my thigh. The spider was inside my jeans, which were folded on the dryer (in the basement. I had just put my jeans on, felt it move and bite, quick stripped off the jeans, and saw it--very clearly, noticed the weird mark, and stepped on it. Didn't know about them at that time, but learned about them. The bite did swell up and ended up necrotizing an area of skin about 1 1/2" in diameter over a period of weeks. Well, I got over it eventually and was fine, but researched it and found it online. And I know brown recluses well after that experience.

Appreciate the heads up. And to this day I'm careful when I put on shoes, and hang our jeans up immediately after taking them out of the dryer. lol

Ticks. With you, Patti, except tick and chigger poison we DO put out on the back yard. Our next door neighbor contracted Rocky Mtn tick fever a year ago. . . was very sick for about 3 months. They caught it fairly shortly or it could have been worse. Lot of rheumatic symptoms as a result afterward. We are fairly paranoid about the buggers, and every day we spray with Deep woods off, as you described. With the poison and the Off, we have experienced many fewer ticks. One got me on the inside of the thigh (haha my spider bite thigh) about 3 weeks ago just before we put down the poison, and yep, still itches on occasion. Every time it began itching terribly, I'd go rub it down vigorously with rubbing alcohol, apply antiseptic ointment and go on about my business. Also scrubbed the bite with soap vigorously every night with my bath. GDW does the same. We've tried other things, but the bites generally just run their course. (The alcohol scrub followed by the ointment always provides us with relief until the next itching bout several hours later.) Hate hate using the poison. I hate it but it is some comfort to me that the cat and dog are always outside, so the birds stay off the grass and in the trees or feeders.

Nancy that sounds terrible! I was bitten once on my arm, but it barely made a little hole. I know I got very lucky considering the damage I've seen from a recluse online. Yikes! Maybe Bon has something there, and I'm less allergic than others? Interesting.

We've seen a little brown garden snake (which I love), 3 tree frogs, innumerable skinks, and 1 toad so far. I was surprised to see the tree frogs already, but they are my favorite! Such a gorgeous green.

Mosquitoes haven't really started here yet, but I'm seeing the ticks like crazy! Normally the backyard is my sanctuary so the hubby only is allowed to put any chemicals on his side of the lawn (the front lol) but I was so worried my 16 month old is gonna get a tick disease I had him spray the back for ticks the other day. He has a landscaping company so he used something commercial grade. Haven't seen one since. (Fingers crossed). My 12 yr old niece was recently diagnosed with Lymes disease, and Mike had Rocky Mountain spotted fever last summer which was brutal. It took months to recover from. Ticks are no joke! Can't wait for my chicks to be old enough to free-range. Maybe they will curb the insect invasion.

I love spiders so I'm with Dawn, I only kill the widows and recluse. Any one found inside gets relocated with a cup. I find widows to be very beautiful (even juvenile males) so it's disappointing to kill them, but they are so dangerous that I force myself to do it. Weird I know.

By the way, Dawn, got a good laugh out of your opening paragraph!

Nancy, When I got bitten, I was cleaning out a linen closet and didn't even know a spider had bitten me until my hand started swelling and turning all sorts of interesting colors. A old lady with whom I worked saw it and said "so, a brown recluse spider bit you, huh?" and that is how I learned what had bitten me. She herself had been bitten on her shoulder many years before and didn't know it and then she lost a substantial part of her shoulder area's flesh to necrotizing. It was horrible. She was hospitalized a long time and nearly lost that arm. She was telling me that tale in the 1980s and it sounded like it had been a good 20s years since it happened. Clearly her bite was a lot worse than mine, which only looked horrible and hurt but didn't necrotize. I've been careful when cleaning out closets, garages and sheds ever since then. Maybe like Alexis, my body just doesn't react strongly to that particular venom. It sure reacts to chiggers though, so I am careful to stay out of tall grass once chigger season arrives.

Black widows are pretty common in our oversized garage (1200 s.f. and Tim and Chris keep it crammed with junk, while I only keep valuable gardening tools and equipment in there, lol), and I try to avoid dark corners and such in there.

We had billions of ticks when we moved here, but almost two decades of free-range guineas, turkeys and chickens have largely taken care of them. I'm not saying we don't have any---but our problem is very minor, is worst very early in the season, and if we keep everything mowed down short and well-weeded, the ticks become less and less of a problem as time goes on. However, you are going to get ticks on you if you walk through our woodland or through high pasture grass that hasn't been mowed. Since we stay out of the woodland acres during snake season, and we mow walking paths through our pasture areas, we stay largely tick-free. The cats and dogs come home with ticks when they go roaming though, so I know there's plenty of them out there.

I'd rather use an insect repellent than be bitten by mosquitoes, ticks, or anything else, and I am especially careful to check myself for ticks when I come indoors at the end of the day. Ticks spread so many diseases nowadays. Maybe they always did and we just didn't know about all the diseases, but we know about them now.

Alexis, We have the tree frogs too and I do love them. Sometimes they surprise me by jumping out of a plant when I didn't even know they were there. I like it when they come and attach themselves to windows and I get to look at them from a different angle.

A couple of days ago, while working on the garden's northern fenceline, where it always is a battle to keep the woodland plants from moving into the garden, I was weeding and found some fresh frass or scat. I looked at it and felt uneasy, like I was pretty sure it was either from a reptile or amphibian but I wasn't sure which one. I tried to be even more careful after that since I wasn't sure what had left it there....and it was soft and gooey and likely only minutes old, so had been deposited there while I was working in that area because I'd been in there for hours.. The next day I found two frogs in that area....what a relief! I did come in and Google to confirm that's what it was....an it was. So, even though I never thought about it before, those of us with frogs and toads in our garden have just one more manure source fertilizing our plants, I guess.

Mosquitoes have been here on and off all winter because except for one cold week we just stayed so warm, but their population exploded here about a week ago. It is awfully early, but it is what it is and now we just have to deal with them.

Poor Mike! With him working outdoors like he does I don't know how he was able to function with Rocky Mountain Spotted Tick Fever. He must have been miserable. I hope he is fully recovered. Your niece is lucky in the sense that she was diagnosed and treated. Some people suffer for years with Lyme's Disease symptoms without really pushing for a diagnosis and suffer for far too long. I agree that ticks are not joke.

Spiders are beneficial and since we have acreage, we have seemingly millions of them...per acre. They are everywhere in great abundance and I love the huge diversity in the spider family. You surely cannot walk through the woods without running into all kinds of webs---in your face, wrapped around your body, in your hair, etc. I bet the spiders hate it when we walk through the woods.

Dawn

For those of you who haven't seen this on Yahoo or People.com, here's a new story (complete with photos) of the damage done to a young woman's face by a brown recluse bite.

Meghan Lindsey Brown Recluse Spider Bite To Face

It's a good thing that only about 10% of people have that suppurating wound symptom, since Brown Recluses are pandemic in the South.

True. Can you imagine what it would be like if everyone reacted to BR spider bites that way? Until you get bitten by one, you don't know how your body will react either.

If people did all react that way the powers that be would cover the earth with pesticide. Or release sterile versions, like with mosquitoes.

Dawn, you must have scared the scrat out of that frog!

I have no reaction to brown recluses...having lived in three houses where you could find three recluses under the sheets if you looked before bed, I'm sure I've been bitten many times.

If you left a dry washcloth on the bathroom basin...a recluse.

You freak out a while and then decide...just gotta live with it.

Amy, That's true.

Bon, Those poor frogs. I really disturbed their habitat by pulling out all the weeds that were crowding the tansy plants. They took off into the woods. Maybe they'll come back. I stayed out of that area today so that it would be peaceful and maybe they'd return.

dbarron, In our Fort Worth home, which was built way back in the 1940s, after I got bitten that one time, I watched for them and didn't see them.

It is a whole different story here. They seem to mostly lurk in the closets. The one in the bathroom probably had come out of the closet in the master bedroom...and it is neat and tidy and the cleanest it ever has been. Maybe it left the closet looking for a better place to hide. The bathroom was not that place. May that poor spider rest in peace.

It is true that you just learn to live with them. What else can you do? Between venomous snakes, venomous spiders and venomous scorpions, I have learned to (mostly) be careful where I put my fingers and toes. When I forget to be careful, I either get a big scare or a bad bite....thankfully, so far, with only bites from scorpions here in OK.

Dawn

Before I bought a house next to a park I though the seasons consisted of winter, spring, summer and fall. Now I know we have ladybug/stinkbug season, wasp, toad and spider season, fly and mosquito season and yellow jacket, hornet season.

Blue, That is hilarious....and so true!

I was bitten by a brown recluse several years ago in the middle of my back. Lived with the pain (a stabbing pain) for a couple of days and showed it to my daughter who told me to call my doctor. I did and went in over my lunch break the next day. He took one look at it and told me it was a BR bite and asked me if I had ever been tased. They were fairly new back then so of course I said no. He proceeded to turn me on my side with the trash can nearby. Then, like the hours on a clock, he tased me three times and let me catch my breath and then another three, going all around the bite. Twelve shocks in all. I asked him about the trash can and he said people throw up so he just gets prepared. Happy to say I didn't throw up but my toes were forever curled up! About three months later a small popcorn size core fell out. It never gave me any problems. Our vet called me several years after my experience when he got a BR bite and he went to him to get a treatment. Same thing. Don't know what I'll do now-he retired three years ago.

Wow! Great doctor to use alternative medicine that works!

That's a pretty cool treatment, but being tazed is almost as bad as being bitten. I wonder if they use a lower voltage tazer than law enforcement officers use because the strength of the tazers that law enforcement officers use is awfully strong and I cannot imagine that being used 12 times on a person. Tim has to be tazed periodically when they do tazer training courses---every cop who is tazer-certified in his department has to experience what a tazer feels like themselves before they are certified to use them on other people. He describes it as very difficult to endure. (They do the same thing with pepper spray training too.)

So, since I couldn't get the idea out of my mind that the medical taser had to be lower voltage or people would be dying, I Googled and found this story:

Oklahoma Doctor Uses Taser for BR Bites

It was a relief to read that the medical tazers are, indeed, lower voltage.

I bet there are other doctors who use the medical tazers, but I don't know how you'd find one of them.

Dawn

Dawn, maybe you should look into buying one of those gadgets? It might work on venomous snake bites. Maybe I should get one, too.

LOL. I don't know that I'd be brave enough to tase myself. I do wonder if anyone has used it for venomous snake bites. I don't know that it would work since the venom moves through your blood system, unlike spider venom that is more contained in the flesh. Now, if they had a mini, mini Taser that would work as relief for mosquito, tick and chigger bites...that would be a worthy investment for sure. We are just about at the right temperature for chiggers to be starting up. We usually don't have them until May, but it is awfully warm awfully early, so we did all the mowing and weedeating we could yesterday to cut the grass down very short to help discourage them. I have been so garden-focused lately that if anything else is happening in the real world, I guess I'm missing it. We still have gazillions of skeeters even without recent rainfall, so I cannot imagine how bad they'd be if we were getting regular rainfall.

The mosquitoes are biting through clothes. Now, I must spray my clothes and be done and indoors well before sundown.

Ahh. I haven't dared utter this even in writing, but in the time I've been here, mosquitos have been the least of the insect vampires. I'm thinking "they" must spray for them--even on the lake they haven't shown up hardly. And yet I've not ever SEEN them spraying. Well, I hope it continues, and it's a blessing to count.

Have you all had your dogs bitten by venomous snakes? Titan got a bite last summer. We didn't know it until about 11-12 pm on a Sunday night. We were sitting in the livingroom, and he'd come in and was lying at our feet, panting, and then became distressed and began slobbering, panting, and pacing, pawing at his head, he'd lean on us for comfort. I knew SOMETHING had bitten him and guessed that it was a snake. We did NOT rush him into the vet--we doubted that one would even be available in Wagoner. However, I stayed up all night with him--and it was an awful night. Had he gotten even worse, I would have tried contacting the vet. He didn't sleep a wink, either, as I am remembering, just lay on my feet slobbering and fretting--wouldn't eat, wouldn't drink. At 6 the next morning I went to bed and woke Garry to watch. We had agreed we'd call the vet as soon as the office opened. When I woke up 3-4 hours later, I rushed out and there was Titan zonked out. Garry said he finally went to sleep about 7:30, and seemed to be sleeping peacefully. And so we did not call the vet. Titan slept all day! Until about 4-5 pm. It wasn't until then that we saw the two-pronged wound right on his muzzle near his nose. When he woke, he was in a bit of a daze for a half hour, then went to his water bowl and drained it. Was shaky for a couple hours, and then came to, and was his regular self by bed time. So he can say he got a snake bite and lived to tell about it. (I'm guessing it was a pygmy rattler, as I knew we'd had a couple right next to my big everything bed. Killed those two, but. . .) I learned in my reading that there are snake bite vaccines available, but the effectiveness is anecdotal, not proven. AND Titan's pretty smart. He's not going to be going after snakes again. Just like he doesn't go after skunks (LOL) or wasps.

Bon, Aren't they awful this year? And whatever species is around down here right now is huge. I mean, they aren't big like craneflies, but they are a lot bigger than the average mosquito. I understand that Dallas County, TX, where Tim and Chris work of course, already has confirmed 3 cases of West Nile Virus in mosquitoes trapped and tested as a means of early disease detection. They often detect the virus in trapped mosquitoes long before any human cases occur, but it still bothers me that they are detecting it so early there. That means it is only 80 miles SE of our county, if not closer.

Nancy, I hope your luck with the mosquitoes holds. The population here seems to explode when we start hitting temperatures in the 80s and have had recent or fairly recent rainfall. Some years it surprises me how slow they are to show up, but we had them all winter long without ceasing, so I'm not surprised the population is high now.

They may spray around the lake, but that only does so much good. At some point, they cannot spray enough to get them all, so enjoy it for however long it lasts!

Yes, we have had both dogs and cats bitten by venomous snakes. Most survived. I am glad your dog did survive it. Only a couple of our pets were sick enough to require a trip to the vet. Cats are less likely to survive than large dogs. We have one cat, Shady, who was bitten by a copperhead about 12 or 13 years ago. He developed the copper-colored rash and the whole nine yards, and still has a scar where the rash appeared. Another cat, Ranger, was bitten in the face and partially paralyzed. We took her to the vet and ran up big bills to save her, and it was worth every nickle. Even after the vet finally took her off the IV and let her come home after about a week of his skilled intensive care, her eyes were paralyzed open for weeks, and he still wasn't sure if the paralysis would heal, though he thought it would. She slept by creeping into a dark corner of the closet and burying her head in the darkest spot she could find. She's fully back to normal now. Honestly, I did not expect her to survive. Our now-deceased cat, Spots, was bitten twice, several years apart. The vet was surprised she survived the first time and said a second venomous bite likely would kill her. It didn't. She died about a decade later of old-age related issues.

Our Rottweiler-Terrier mix, Duke, who passed away last year at the age of 12, took a direct hit to the face from a timber rattler around 2008 and should not have survived that. Tim was at a wreck on the interstate and I sent him a frantic text message because it was a Sunday evening and I knew a vet wasn't a viable option. Duke started going into shock, so I sat on the ground and held him upright. Tim said if I let him go down on the ground, we'd likely lose him. As soon as Tim got home, he broke out the Benadryl tablets, crushed up a couple, dissolved them in water and forced them down Duke's throat with a syringe. By then, Duke was panting heavily and was glassy-eyed. Within maybe 30 minutes of receiving the Benadryl, the swelling in his face went down and he seemed fine, and I was finally able to let go of him after having held him upright (he weighed 110 lbs.) for about 90 minutes. Ever since then, we have kept a bottle of the Children's Benadryl in the medicine cabinet in case a dog needs it again. With Duke, the snake struck him on the side of his snout, near his nose, which is a fairly bony area, which may have saved Duke's life, as it may have kept some of the venom from making it into his bloodstream. People tend to have a very strong reaction to a bite from a timber rattler, so I didn't have high hopes when I saw that snake scurrying away from Duke and knew that was what had just bitten him.

A lot of people think they'll just take the pet to the vet and he or she will give it antivenin and all will be well, which isn't really likely. Using antivenin is cost-prohibitive, and not even guaranteed to work. Sometimes, a reaction to it can be worse than the original snakebite, and you never know how someone, animal or human, will react to the antivenin. We have lost two cats to snakebites, both in our very early years here. Except for my garden and the chicken coop areas, we don't have as many snakes around the house as we used to, and we haven't had a cat or dog bitten by a snake now in several years. I hope our luck holds.

In Duke's case, he was bitten near our front driveway gate. For several years after that, he would't walk near that gate. In fact, he'd make a big wide circle around if when he was on the leash and we were going for a walk. He had a very long memory of what happened to him there. In Duke's case, we had just returned from a walk and I took him off the leash to let him walk freely up the driveway. Apparently he stopped to pee on the gate, and the snake suddenly struck him. Neither he nor I saw the snake until it bit him. He didn't even like waterhoses after that, so I know he never forgot.

When Spots was bitten the first time, we'd lived here only a few months and knew nothing about pets being snakebitten. We called our next door neighbor and he told us that his mother always saved snakebitten animals by feeding them a raw egg mixed with bacon grease. I tried that and Spots wouldn't eat it, so we took her to the vet, who basically said "either she'll make it or she won't" and explained about the use of antivenin, which he does not recommend. The second time we just called him and he said "either she'll make it or she won't". lol. These old country vets don't get as excited about snake bites as we humans do. Our current vet is a group practice which has a cat specialist on its staff and he is a miracle worker with snake bites. We really didn't think Ranger would make it, but he was willing to try to save her, so how could we say no to that? She's a very sweet cat and a perfect companion. We didn't see her get bitten so don't know how it happened, but all our cats seem to know to avoid snakes. I don't want to know how they learned that.

Dawn

You know they make benadril in those dissolving strips that just melt in their mouths. DD has used those on dogs before for allergies. How much do you use for a snake bite?

Aw, such heart-wrenching stories. :(

My new job has field technicians and the company is very safety conscious, so we get regular safety meetings. The last one covered snakes, spiders, biting insects, and something.... The time before covered ticks. We had an employee in our office come down with Rocky Mtn. Spotted Fever last fall from a tick bite. He knew all the precautions, sprayed, and removed the tick, but he thinks the head might have gotten left. He never broke out in the rash and other normal effects, so they didn't know his symptoms were RMSF until he went into kidney failure. Scary. He was sick for months.

On snake bites, they reminded all of us not to lance the bite or suck the poison, that only works in the movies. :) The most interesting thing was to brush ants off of you, not smoosh them, it will help keep them from attaching.

Amy, Duke was over 100 lbs so we gave him two or three Benadryl capsules to counteract the swelling, and it made such a difference so quickly I couldn't believe it. You could almost see the swelling going down and the light and sparkle returning to his eyes. You have to compute it by weight. We had friends in Fort Worth probably 25 or more years ago who had a dog with severe allergies that had to take Benadryl daily, and I think even for that fairly small dog, the dosage was 25 mg. per their vet. I believe the standard recommendation for dogs is 1 mg. per pound of body weight, but you might want to Google and confirm that. This was long before they came out with the self-dissolving strips. I think those would be great but haven't tried them.

Lisa, That is just terrible about the gentleman with RMSF. Did they reverse his kidney failure? What a horrifying complication to endure.

I've always brushed off ants instead of smooshing them, but then I grew up in Texas with fire ants back almost as far as I can remember---at least back into the 1970s, so have lots (as in too much) of experience with ants.

My most horrifying snake story comes from the day I drove up here in 1998 to meet the electric co-op workers who were going to install the temporary power pole for the construction workers to use while building our house. The water co-op guys came the same day to put in our water meter and water line. Both groups of workers carry county law enforcement radios or had scanners in their vehicles so they can respond to emergencies quickly. They told me that two people had been bitten by snakes in our neighborhood that very day, which scared me and also impressed upon me the need to be very, very cautious. With one of those people and I believe it was the one whose location was closest to our house, the rattlesnake wouldn't take its fangs out of the person's arm or leg or whatever it was, so the paramedics had to cut the body off the snake and transport the person with the snake's head attached to their body. That's a story I'll never forget. I was so horrified to hear that then, and remain horrified by the thought of it now. If being bitten by a venomous snake isn't bad enough, imagine having it attached to you and refusing to let go.