Copperhead Bites Man, Then Son

[CharlieJ]

Copperhead Bites Man, Then Son
Hanover dad passed out while trying to get weapon to kill snake
BY OLYMPIA MEOLA
Jul 14, 2006

Michael Reed had seen the occasional snake slither through his Hanover County yard, but he didn't think he'd ever find one curled up at the foot of his staircase. Until Wednesday morning, anyway.

Reed woke up, lumbered downstairs about 6:20 a.m. and was bitten on the right foot by a poisonous copperhead snake coiled on a floor mat. "I really didn't see it bite me, but when I felt it, I looked back and saw the snake," Reed, 45, said yesterday from his hospital room at the VCU Medical Center.

"It stung really bad." He called 911, woke a friend sleeping on the couch and told him to go upstairs to wake his son. Reed was fetching a crowbar to kill the varmint when he passed out. His son, Justin Clay Reed, 15, came downstairs to find his dad on the floor. He was trying to pull his father away from the scaly intruder when the snake bit the teen on his left foot, Michael Reed said.

Animal control removed the snake from the house off Reed Town Lane, killed it and sent it to the hospital for doctors to inspect. Michael Reed said it was about 18 inches long. Both Reeds were taken to the hospital. Justin Clay Reed was released yesterday. Michael Reed remains hospitalized in stable condition.

Sgt. M. Hairfield with Hanover County animal control responded to the snake-bite call. In her 10 years with the department, she said, she has never come across a similar situation. But, Hairfield said, it's that time of year. Just yesterday, she said, she took a large black snake out of a house. "It happens all the time," she said. "They can come in your house many, many different ways."

In 2005, the three poison centers in Virginia had 269 reports of snake bites. Of those, 118 were from copperheads, according to Rutherfoord Rose, director of the Virginia Poison Center at Virginia Commonwealth University. "They can be serious in that they can cause a lot of tissue damage," said Rose, whose center manages at least 50 snake-bite cases each year. "It's very unlikely to kill you, certainly, and unlikely to cause you to lose an arm or leg."

Reed's not sure how the snake entered his house. But he doesn't want to wake up like that again. He plans to check the nooks and crannies when he gets home. "I'm going to have to do some investigating."