Tough Old Italian Broad: 1, Rattlesnake: 0 [Kills Snake with Her Bare Hands]

[roo_ster]

I like stories where old folks don't let their age keep them from doing remarkable things.

Also, I encountered a pygmy rattler as a kid in Florida.  It took me one shot from my dad's old Benjamin pump BB gun to end its reign of terror.




http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/aug/10/101707/woman-87-bitten-pygmy-rattler-kills-snake-cane/news-breaking/

TAMPA - One fatality was reported Monday when a pygmy rattlesnake bit an 87-year-old woman on the hand.

The final score: Cane-wielding octogenarian, 1: venomous snake, 0.

Esther Orring spent most of Monday in the hospital but is expected to make a full recovery. The snake, however, is very much dead after Orring killed it with her bare hands.

"She's a very strong person,'' daughter Maria Pellicone said of her mother.

The snake bit Orring this morning after she saw it on the doorstep of her home at Hunters Green. Not realizing what it was, she first pushed it around with her cane, but when she bent over to move it aside, the tiny snake bit her on the middle finger of her right hand.

Orring then killed the snake with her hands, Pellicone said, and went inside to try treating herself. She pricked herself with a pin to try to draw out blood and venom, then swabbed herself with alcohol. Then she called Pellicone at work _ Orring doesn't speak English _ and her daughter called an ambulance.

Pellicone said her mother is familiar with snakes, having seen _ and killed _ them often growing up in Italy.

"In the farm back home in Italy, we have lots of snakes,'' Pellicone said. "So she kills the snake because in a farm we would eat on the floor because we had no table …. so you had to sit on the floor to eat. So the snakes that come around she would kill with the rocks.''

Orring was taken to University Community Hospital, where she was given antivenin.

Pellicone says says she hopes her mother doesn't spend as much time outdoors, even if she is set in her ways. The trip to the hospital was somewhat traumatizing for her mother, she said, not so much because of the snake but because her mother "don't like to take her clothes off.''

[freedom lover]

The website won't load. That said, I know I am heavily biased, but I think Italian women are some of the coolest on earth. You could call it an ethnocentrist thing if you want. I admit their isn't much logic behind it.

[vaskidmark]

Pic on the web site shows middle finger about 2X size of the rest of the fingers.  Magic marker lines on back of hand in area of swelling seems to show swelling going down.

Granny picked up the little rattler and after it bit her she bore down with her grip and "smooshed" [yes, it's a technical phrase, look it up!] the neck about 1 inch behind the head.  Apparently it was enough to stop motility, and then she dropped/threw it down to go treat herself.

If rubbing alcohol cannot fix, it must be serious!  My grandmothher started with merchurichrome, upped the ante to iodine, and if those two did not cure it we got a gauze bandage wrapped around the boo-boo which was then doused with rubbing alcihol.  Only exception was sunburn - that was cheesecloth soaked in white vinigar.  I spend a few weekends smelling like a salad before I learned to keep my shirt on.

stay safe.

skidmark

[crt360]

Only exception was sunburn - that was cheesecloth soaked in white vinigar.  I spend a few weekends smelling like a salad before I learned to keep my shirt on.

Same here.  I never could tell that it did anything but make me smell like a pickle.   

[vaskidmark]

Same here.  I never could tell that it did anything but make me smell like a pickle.   

Actually does have some positive effect on 1st degree sunburn, and can help toughen new skin underneath as blisters drain for mild/moderate 2nd degree sunburn.  Downside seemed to be that it blocked my being able to hear anything said to me about the various degrees of doofus I was for getting burns, especially when 4X4s dripping vinegar were stuffed behind my ears & over the tops.

Ah, youth!  Aint it amazing we ever survived it?

stay safe.

skidmark