US: Man gets bitten by severed head of snake which he killed; survives

This couldn't get more bizarre than this. A man from Texas almost died after the severed head of a rattlesnake which he had just decapitated bit him as he tried to pick up the killed serpent's head.

The victim's wife told local news station KIIITV that doctors were initially pessimistic about the chances of her husband's survival but he did survive, thanks to 26 vials of anti-venom, Gizmodo news site said. Trauma surgeon Michael Halpert also told the news site that the man's kidney functioning had weakened but was yet stable, Gizmodo added.

It all happened when the man was doing yard work on the Memorial Day in the US last week when he spotted the four-foot venomous snake and used a shovel to behead it. But when he tried to remove the severed head, it bit him, releasing a potentially fatal dose of venom in his body.

Her wife was quick to take the man to the hospital but he soon started having seizures and then was transferred to an ambulance, followed by an emergency helicopter, to take him to the hospital fast, the news report said.

One doctor, Leslie Boyer of the University of Arizona VIPER Institute, said that reptiles are made differently as their severed head can function for a long time yet after getting severed, Gizmodo added. She even heard of snakes moving as long as 12 hours after getting split into two and there was even a case in which the mummified snake head bit a person, Gizmodo added.

She also said that cutting up a snake was not the best way to handle the reptile.