A Close Encounter

A Cautionary Tale

A warm sunny day between Christmas and New year. The family gathered. Fun. Laughter. Love. Food. Joy. After lunch, I headed outside to give the bottle-fed baby goats their midday feed. My daughter Lauren came with me. Just a quick excursion. I didn’t bother changing from my shorts and T-shirt, figuring I’d be careful and should be able to avoid getting too much milk on my clothes. I slipped my Crocs on as I walked out the door.

Chai and Charlie quickly scoffed their bottles. Lauren and I put them back in the temporary paddock where all of the goats were browsing weeds for the day - they have a better paddock with proper fencing and a shelter where they spend each night, but during the day I often put them in different areas, moving the temporary fence to get them to eat overgrown weedy areas. They do a good job on weedy wattles and blackberries.

Lauren and I headed back towards the house. Chai and Charlie pushed through the temporary fence to follow us. Then Boo, one of the older kids, followed suit. That set Boo’s mother Sesame off and suddenly all the goats wanted to get out. I walked across a rough grassy area - not overly tall, but a dense thatch - to retrieve one of the kids. That’s when it happened.

Goats on weed patrol; the grass where I was walking was not this dense and tall.

Thwack! Something whipped me on the outside of my bare right knee. Hard. Sharp. Like an electric shock. Ouch. I stopped and looked down. Couldn’t see anything. Just my bare legs and feet in inadequate footwear.

“What’s wrong?” Lauren asked.

“I think maybe a snake just bit me,” I said. More bemused than scared. Disbelieving rather than panicking. I couldn’t see a snake anywhere. Lauren hadn’t seen a snake. Surely it hadn’t been a snake.

“Really?”

“No, surely not.” Changing tack, I walked into the shed, thinking I’d quickly rinse the kids’ bottles then get some goat feed to call all the goats back to the main paddock. Inside, I looked down at my leg. A couple of small red marks had appeared on the side of my knee. Not puncture marks and it didn’t hurt at all. I walked back outside to where Lauren was entertaining Chai and Charlie. “I think I might have actually been bitten by a snake,” I said. Still disbelieving.

“Shouldn’t you be sitting down then? What should I do?” Lauren asked. I liked that she didn’t panic. She was calm. As was I, remarkably.

“Yes, I shouldn’t be moving.” I sat down on the ground in the shade while Lauren ran down to the house and told the others. I inspected the side of my knee. There really wasn’t much of a mark, but there was something. Lauren sprinted back up with the first aid kit and we applied a pressure bandage. Rob drove the car up to where I was sitting and then drove me to the hospital. All the time, I was thinking this was a gross over-reaction. The human kids (all adults) stayed behind and wrangled the goats back into the proper paddock. (Yes, they put on long pants and tall boots before going anywhere near where I had been.)

The snakes you see, like this dugite I came across on a walking trail, probably aren’t the ones you will be bitten by.

I spent a few hours at the hospital getting checked out. I was impressed with how seriously the hospital staff took it, even as I told them I wasn’t sure what had happened. I felt a bit of a fraud, and kept telling everyone I didn’t definitely know that I had been bitten. I hadn’t actually seen a snake, but I couldn’t think what else might feel like that. They assured me that it was absolutely the right thing to have come in and I definitely shouldn’t have waited at home to see if I developed any symptoms. They didn’t take the bandage off to investigate the ‘bite’ site straight away. They observed me first. The idea of bandaging a snake bite is to immobilise the limb to stop the lymph moving and keep the venom contained within the one area. They don’t remove the bandage immediately because if there is venom in the system, it could suddenly be released as the bandage is removed. That’s also why you shouldn’t move when you have been bitten, or suspect you might have been bitten.

In the end I didn’t develop any symptoms. My bloods looked normal. If a snake had struck me, I was lucky as I hadn’t been envenomated. When they finally took the bandage off, there was barely a mark on my leg. I was discharged after a few hours but told to go straight back if my vision blurred, if I felt sick, if I developed swelling in my leg. None of those things happened. I was thinking I’d imagined the whole thing. But lying in bed that night, I had a strange ache in the side of my knee. Not terrible, but enough to make me realise something had whacked me.

I am usually very careful in terms of wearing good footwear and long pants when in snaky areas. I know to stomp heavily to scare them away. But that day, distracted by holiday joy and recalcitrant goats, I didn’t stomp. I wasn’t mindful of where I was putting my feet. And because I was just ducking out quickly, I went in shorts and Crocs. The irony of these facts is not lost on me. I know also that once bitten it is imperative not to move. Snake venom travels in lymph and lymph only moves when the body moves. I should have sat down as soon as I felt the thwack. It was stupid not to. In my defence, I was completely disbelieving and there were no puncture marks to indicate a snake bite. But still … I should have stayed still.

I have always known that it’s the snakes you don’t see that bite you, but I had expected that you would see something. A glimpse as they retreat after the attack. A reptilian form in the grass just as your foot lands on it. I saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. Lauren, who was metres away from me, saw nothing.

From the moment something thwacked me until I was discharged from hospital, and even after, I suspected I had somehow imagined the whole thing.

Yet that night, lying in bed, I had a dull ache in the side of my knee. A bruised feeling.

Then a couple of days later, Rob (wearing boots and long pants) saw a large tiger snake right near where I was when the incident happened. A snake plenty big enough to strike as high as my knee. Hmmm. The circumstantial evidence piles up, convincing me I had a close encounter and a lucky escape.

Stay safe out there,

Jill