Ray Hunter bitten by EDB

[Lori P]

Here's something off of Yahoo this morning about setting a record with rattlers in a bathtub:

Texan sets record with 87 snakes in tub - Yahoo! News

I'm just not sure my thought process would have ever gotten around to snuggling snakes in a tub... lol

[drache]

Funny thing is my homeowners insurance will not cover me if I have a rottwieller or pitbull, but I can have all the rattlers I want

our homeowner's insurance was going to charge us $500.- more, for having snakes, and Jeff was going to just let that pass
I ended up calling the agent and telling her that anything remotely dangerous is already illegal in NYC and if I had anything like that I would have been unlikely to mention it at all - and they backed off
now I wonder whether they originally asked because of particular dog breeds

[RZL36]

Jeff,

Isn't there a limit to how many hots you can have?

[adamanteus]

Any news on Rays recovery?

[Bay_area]

Last I heard was a week ago...

Update:

After near-fatal bite in PSL, 'Cobraman' says he plans to slow down

By Will Greenlee

Saturday, November 10, 2007

PORT ST. LUCIE — Ray Hunter knew this bite was going to be bad.

At 5 1/2 feet long, the eastern diamondback rattlesnake that chomped his right hand was a monster.

"I could feel that this thing put a lot of venom in me," Hunter said Friday in his room at St. Lucie Medical Center, nearly two weeks after the bite.

The 44-year-old Miami native has had a lifelong passion for snakes. The recent bite is his 44th "significant venomous" one and "definitely the worst."

Hunter, whose nickname is "Cobraman," is in renal failure, his right arm remains swollen significantly and he doesn't know when he can return to his Port St. Lucie home.

"I thank God, that God's given me another chance to go on living," Hunter said. "I know he's got some plan for me out there, I just don't know what it is."

Hunter, who's licensed to possess venomous snakes, got the male rattler, along with another eastern diamondback, from city animal control officials a few days before the bite.

"Instead of relocating it or killing it or whatever their options might be, if it's a venomous snake, they give it to me," he explained.

Hunter was cleaning cages early Oct. 27 and made a mistake judging distance.

Then it happened.

He quickly changed his shirt, shut down his computers and checked his watch — it was 12:36 a.m. — before driving to the hospital.

"The venom started taking effect very quickly," he said. "If you'd have told me before this happened that this ... could happen this quickly I would tell you you're crazy, that it can't, that you've safely got an hour."

He felt drunk and couldn't stay on the road. Knowing he couldn't park in the emergency room lot and walk in, Hunter figured he'd get as close as he could and then honk the horn.

"I felt like I was going to pass out, and, in fact, I did," he said.

A passerby told a police officer a man appeared to be unconscious behind the wheel of his parked vehicle, and he was taken inside.

Hunter said the bite has made him "more aware of a lot of things."

"I just basically have to just slow down, be a little more careful," he said. "The problem with working with a lot of snakes is you get complacent."

A practice of self immunization, or injecting diluted amounts venom, also lends to complacency.

"It's an added little insurance policy, but you're not God," he said. "When it's time to go, it's time to go."

Hunter, who buys and sells vacant lots for a living, said he usually doesn't keep his snakes at his home. The snake that bit him was there because he'd just gotten it a few days prior.

It's now at a zoo in another state, he said, along with some king cobras and "some other stuff that they'd bought."

[The article contains photos of Ray and the "monster" EDB that bit him]

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2007/nov/10/30after-44-bites-you-just-know-it-had-put-a-lot/

[adamanteus]

Good news then. It sounds as though he's going to be okay.

[drache]

glad he made it through
pretty amazing