Severed Rattlesnake Head Bites Texas Man; He Nearly Died

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX -- When a Texas man heard his wife scream in the garden because she had nearly grabbed a rattlesnake, he did what any husband would do: he rushed over with a shovel and cut its head off.

But even when detached from its body, a rattlesnake head can still bite. And Jeremy Sutcliffe found that out the hard way.

On the weekend of May 27, Jennifer Sutcliffe was doing some yard work before a planned family cookout, The Washington Post reported. When she reached down to grab some weeds, she shrieked. A 4-foot western diamondback rattlesnake was hiding in the flowers.

“I reached down to pull out a little area of grass that was growing around one of my flowers, and I almost grabbed the snake,” she told the newspaper. “The snake was not happy about that at all. It came up with its head, so I screamed.”

Her husband, Jeremy Sutcliffe, heard his wife's cries and rushed over.

“My husband came over and grabbed a shovel and cut off the head,” Jennifer Sutcliffe told Global News. “We have very small dogs and I have a grandchild who was luckily not there at the time.”

Thinking the snake was dead, he walked over to its body about 10 minutes later. That's when Jennifer Sutcliffe heard him scream.

“The head actually turned around and grabbed onto his hand. He had to rip the snake’s head off,” she told the news outlet. “He got all of the snake’s venom in the bite.”

A severed snake head can still bite - and more importantly, release venom - for more than an hour after being detached. And that's exactly what happened, she says.

She immediately called 911 and tried to find a hospital that had anti-venom. The nearest one was more than an hour away. They started driving.

During the ride, Jeremy Sutcliffe began slipping in and out of consciousness. He began having seizures and was bleeding internally.

“When he was going in and out he said, ‘If I die, I love you,’" Jennifer Sutcliffe told The Post.

He told her to tell his daughter the same thing as they waited for an ambulance.

“I think he was pretty scared," she says.

Emergency responders flew him to a hospital, placed him into an induced coma and hooked him up to a ventilator.

“They were loading him with heavy amounts of fluids and his blood pressure bottoming out,” she told the Global News. “His body was going into septic shock, his organs were shutting down, and he was bleeding internally.”

A normal snakebite victim would receive two to four doses of antivenom, she told KIII-TV.

"He had to have 26 doses," she says.

Jeremy emerged from the coma May 31 and is now in stable condition, she tells media outlets. A GoFundMe campaign has been created to help cover his medical expenses.

"He is still recovering with acute renal failure that requires dialysis and is getting aggressive wound care to his hand," the post says. "He has Medicare Insurance, but has to pay 20% of everything and it has no max out of pocket limit. So our portion will likely be an extremely high amount."

As of Thursday afternoon it had raised $200 out of a goal of $10,000.

Photo credit: Shutterstock/GoFundMe