Arizona experts give tips on how to avoid rattlesnake bites

Chances are the rattlesnake you encountered on your hike or in your driveway was headed to work. Like humans, snakes have their routines. They forage for breakfast, meet up with potential mates and tuck in for the night, just like we do.

Although rattlesnakes and humans usually avoid one another, it’s only when they encounter each other that people get bitten. In essence, learning to avoid rattlesnakes prevents bites.

That’s the message a Tucson toxicologist and a snake wrangler are trying to convey to the public. Their aim is to reduce the roughly 200 to 250 rattlesnake bites that occur among Arizonans each year. Fatalities are rare, less than 1% over the past 40 years, according to Geoffrey Smelski, a clinical toxicologist at the University of Arizona’s Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center.

Although the idea of avoiding rattlesnakes may seem obvious, people know little about steering clear of them.

“An encounter takes two,” says Bryan Hughes, whose business specializes in rattlesnake relocation and conservation. “The snake is not the problem; it’s a symptom of often predictable and avoidable situations.”

Most bites occur when rattlesnakes and humans surprise one another. Yet, adult rattlesnakes’ behavior is highly predictable, and it’s that predictability that can prevent bites.

Hughes and Smelski study the ecology of rattlesnakes with an eye on preventing snakebites through demographic data. For example, they note who, when and where someone was bitten and what the person was doing at the time.

Data gleaned from 25 years of more than 4,000 snakebite calls to the poison center shows that 83% of people were unaware of the snake before being bitten, 62% of the bites involved males (humans) and 55% of bites involved people’s lower extremities. Most bites, 59%, occurred on residential property, half between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Although snakebites occur all year, spring and summer are peak times. By late June, it’s too hot for snakes and people to be out during the day. Encounters tend to occur during early morning and at dusk.

“People are getting an early start on watering their gardens or early hikes or early walks,” Hughes says. “One of the big misconceptions that society has about snakes, and reptiles in general, is that they just want to be as hot as they can, that being cold-blooded means you just need to sit in the sun.”

Instead, snakes avoid high heat. During the summer, they seek shade, which is why it’s unwise to place your hands or feet in places that are obscured.

Dr. Anne-Michelle Ruha, chief of the department of medical toxicology at Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix, says most patients she treats for snakebites were simply going about their routine, like walking the dog or gardening.

“I had one (patient) last week who went outside with bare feet in the dark to take out the trash,” she says. “It’s amazing how many foot bites we get where the patients weren’t wearing shoes.”

The battle of 40 feet

When people spot a snake near their home for the first time, they tend to believe the snake has just moved in, and now, there’s “this big, new danger,” Hughes says. But the snake has likely been living there for months or years. “That snake has been using that space silently, learning your behavioral patterns to avoid you this whole time.”

But eliminating hiding places, like trash cans and rosemary bushes, or adding rattlesnake-proof fencing — something Hughes does — can keep rattlesnakes out of specific areas and prevent encounters.

“We call it the battle of 40 feet," Hughes says. “A snake on your patio, that’s a problem. A snake 40 feet away, living its best life in the wash, that’s fine, and that’s sustainable conservation.”

Although adult snakes behave predictably, baby rattlers are another matter. Babies are born from late July to early September, so it’s not uncommon to encounter them then.

“Baby rattlesnakes don’t really follow a lot of the rules,” Hughes says. “They stay with their mothers for about 10 days, and then they head out into the world in all different directions.”

Hughes says in the rare case he’s called to remove a rattlesnake from inside a home or an office building, the snake is usually a baby.

If you’re bitten

If you are bitten, Smelski says it’s important to get to a hospital as soon as possible.

The Arizona poison center covers 14 counties, except Maricopa, which has its own poison center. “We have 63 hospitals that we answer calls from,” says Smelski.

Applying a tourniquet, bleach or sucking the venom out of a wound isn’t advised, Ruha says. Getting to a hospital for continuous monitoring is. Physicians are on the lookout for swelling, tissue damage and changes in the patient’s blood chemistry, whether or not a patient has received anti-venom.

“We use the evolution of the disease as it’s unfolding to determine whether or not there’s benefit in additional antivenom,” Smelski says. “So, we track what’s referred to as the progression of the envenomation.”

Although most people recover from a rattlesnake bite within three months, and some as quickly as one to two weeks, others are physically disabled for months. Smelski estimates that one-third or more of snakebite patients suffer psychologically, too, a little-studied subject he’s now exploring. What’s more, the cost of hospital charges for snake envenomation is steep, typically $100,000.

“The total number of people being bitten isn’t enormous, but the individual burden on each patient is huge,” Ruha says.