Venomous snake bites nearly double in South Florida. Here’s what to do if you’re ever bitten.
Two months ago, 21-year-old Amazon driver Mone’t Robinson delivered a package to the front porch of a Palm City home. But instead of leaving in her truck, she left in an ambulance.
A large eastern diamondback rattlesnake — the most venomous snake in North America — was coiled on the porch and struck her on the back of the leg, just above the knee.
By the time medics loaded her into the ambulance, she could “hardly breathe,” and would spend three weeks in the hospital recovering.
This year there have been nearly twice as many emergency snake bites than in the previous two years, according to Lt. Chris Pecori of the Miami-Dade Venom Response Team, which responds to snake bites in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties and oversees antivenom procurement for the region.
“We actually had a significant increase,” Pecori said. “We usually average two bites a month. In 2020, there were a total of 27 bites. In 2021, it was 27. In 2022, it was 25, and this year I’ve had 42 bites. So I am up.”
It’s hard to say why there may be more bites this year, but Pecori suspects it could be related to the recent population boom in Florida. “We’re expanding so far west, into our Everglades,” he said.
He collected his statistics after South Florida’s “snake season,” which runs from April to October, ended.
His statistics include three categories of bites:
- Native venomous snakes such as the eastern diamondback rattlesnake that bit Robinson, as well as cottonmouths and coral snakes.
- Exotic venomous snakes held in captivity, such as cobras.
- Bites from non-venomous snakes such as invasive pythons.
From 2020-2022, he averaged two eastern diamondback bites annually, and this year he’s treated five.
Cottonmouths, aka water moccasins, account for 6% of bites nationally, said Pecori, but in South Florida, they’re the No. 1 venomous bite species because of our region’s matrix of swamps and canals. In the past four years, the cottonmouth bites have fluctuated from 9 to 12 bites per year.
He said the most common venomous snake bite in all of Florida is from the dusky pygmy rattlesnake, the smallest rattler in the U.S. at 12 to 24 inches. Pecori said no one has ever died from one of their bites, but you can lose a finger if you don’t seek treatment and the wound becomes necrotic.
His team has treated eight bites from non-native exotic venomous snakes this year, and they were all from captive snakes — he’s never had an exotic bite in the wild.
Where the bites occur
Robinson’s bite happened in a housing development built in 2005 in Palm City, near Stuart. To the west is the Turnpike and farmland, to the south is Atlantic Ridge Preserve State Park. This kind of wilderness/suburbia boundary may be part of a snake-bite trend.
“I don’t get too many calls on the eastern (more developed) side of my county,” Pecori said. “Most of my bites are down in Homestead, Florida City, or to the western edge of the populated areas.”
Cottonmouth bites seem to cluster in a specific area farther north. “I see cottonmouth bites mostly in Southwest Broward and Northwest Dade, in that little realm where they (developers) have kinda developed into swampish Everglades areas.”
One non-venomous species that may occasionally penetrate suburbia, possibly via canals, is the invasive Burmese python. Pecori said he gets about two python calls a month, and he recently caught one in Coral Gables, the farthest north and east he’d ever seen one.
The rattler on the porch
The eastern diamondback rattlesnake that bit Robinson is the largest rattlesnake species in North America, reaching 8 feet in length, and packs the most punch, in part, because its bite delivers a large venom load.
Dr. Ben Abo, a wilderness medic and toxinologist who is consulted by emergency room doctors all over the country on snake bites, said the fact that the snake was on a porch may have made the bite more likely. “Not only did it probably feel trapped, but she’s a lot taller than it. These are snakes that are not going to hunt us. They don’t want to waste their venom on us.”
He said Robinson’s difficulty breathing was not a typical reaction. “She may have been having a severe allergic reaction because of the size of the venom load,” he said.
“The venom (of the eastern diamondback rattlesnake) is a cocktail of toxins that do different things — it’s a combination of toxins that eat away at the tissue … there’s also neurotoxins (that attack the nerves) and hemotoxins, so it affects the blood’s ability to clot.”
The amount of venom alters the effects. He said that Robinson likely received a fairly large load, and that reactions can range from localized pain to skin death and destruction to complete cardiovascular collapse.
First aid if you’re bitten
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, six of Florida’s 44 native snake species are venomous: the eastern coral snake, the southern copperhead, the cottonmouth, the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, the timber rattlesnake and the dusky pygmy rattlesnake.
If one of them bites you, all the old wives’ tales are bunk, Abo said. “You don’t keep the bite lower than the heart. You don’t do tourniquets or anything compressive. You don’t hook up a car battery or tase it or use electricity. You don’t cut and suck, or use any of those commercial extractors. And no ice. Those methods will not only not help, they will cause damage,” he said.
It’s extremely important to keep the bite elevated above your heart so the toxins, which eat away at flesh, don’t remain concentrated in the extremity. In other words, if a snake bites your leg, lie down and elevate the leg.
The idea is to spread them out and weaken them. Keeping the wound below your heart would exacerbate swelling as well, which delays healing. He also implored people to not be afraid of the antivenom.
Pecori added that you should not take aspirin or anti-inflammatories, because they can increase bleeding. He agreed with Abo’s advice, and said the only time he would use a tourniquet on himself is if he was stuck in the Australian outback, eight hours from the nearest hospital, and he was bitten by an inland taipan, whose venom would shut down his airway.
In Florida, no tourniquets, he said. “Here, everyone is within 15 to 30 minutes of a hospital with antivenom, even if that requires a helicopter.”
Pecori said that the antivenoms work for cats and dogs, too, and some are specifically made for pets. If your pet suffers a bite, he suggested calling your vet, not 911.
Bill Kearney covers the environment, the outdoors and tropical weather. He can be reached at bkearney@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Instagram @billkearney or on X @billkearney6.