reptile Archives - KUT & KUTX Studios

Twice in the last three years I’ve seen good sized coral snakes in my yard. Both times I relocated them deep into the woods nearby.

Their presence troubles me because there are often young children playing in my yard. If any were bitten by a Texas Coral Snake, though they probably wouldn’t die, they would be critically ill for a couple of days – and the antivenin they would need, if we could get it, would come in at just under 10K a vial. They’d need between 3 and 5 vials – so it would be physically and financially devastating. I showed the kids pictures and told them not to touch or tease them. “Run and tell an adult,” I said.

By the way, antivenin and antivenom are synonymous. You can say either, or either, and be correct.

No one has died in Texas of a coral snake bite since the antivenin was produced in small amounts in the early 1960s. There was a Florida man who died in 2006, but that was because he didn’t go for help. He died within a few hours of respiratory suffocation. Coral snake venom is a neurotoxin, a cousin of cobra venom.

In Texas, one of the most interesting cases occurred back in 1966 when Boy Scout Randy Wooten, was bit by a coral snake near Fort Worth. There wasn’t enough antivenin to treat him locally, but they did find some at a zoo in Louisiana. The Air Force kindly dispatched a fighter jet to rush the antivenin to him. Made the trip in 30 minutes. Saved his life.

Tim Cole, a herpetologist who owns the Austin Reptile Service, and who does educational lectures on snakes of all kinds, told me that coral snakes are not dangerous in the sense that they will not get aggressive with you in the wild like rattlers will. They are shy snakes and will seek to get away from you. He doesn’t like the saying “Red on yellow will kill a fellow” because it’s wrong in two ways. One, thanks to antivenin, it is highly unlikely a bite will kill you, and two, there are albinos and black corals that break the rule. He said outside of Texas, in South America, the rule often does not hold up either. His best advice is to never pick them up. Ninety percent of coral snake bites occur when people pick them up.

Teresa Shisk-Saling, a licensed veterinary technician who used to work with snakes at Texas A&M’s Vet School, agrees. She told me, “Don’t pick them up. Coral snakes are unpredictable. They are gorgeous snakes but deceptive in their apparent docile nature. They can turn on you quickly. They latch on and won’t let go – chewing on you – to deliver their venom.” And that venom, she said, is 20 times more toxic than rattlesnake venom. The only consolation is that the volume is small. A rattlesnake will inject you with about 800 milligrams (a full hypodermic syringe) of poison in one bite while a coral snake will hit you with only about two percent of that volume. Hope no evil herpetologist is trying to genetically crossbreed the two.

Teresa Shisk-Saling is also Founder and Director of the Reptile Hospice Sanctuary of Texas in Snook. She and her husband have enormous real-world experience working with venomous snakes. Rattlers, she says, are the ones to worry about. Indeed, all you have to do is scan down the CDC records of snake bite deaths in the U.S. over the last hundred years and see that rattlesnakes are responsible for 90 percent of them. Even with that record, you’re still more likely to be killed by a lightning strike than a strike by a venomous snake. Of the 8-thousand snake bites in the U.S. each year, only about 20 are from coral snakes, and some of those are dry bites.

The story of how coral snake antivenin was developed is astonishing. It took Bill Haast, a leading expert on antivenins, 69-thousand milkings of coral snakes to get enough venom to create an antivenin, which was one pint. Wyeth Labs then they took a diluted version of that venom and injected it into horses. The horses weren’t harmed. A few weeks later, they harvested the antibodies from the horses and produced coral snake antivenin. Teresa Shisk-Saling informed me that the last of the coral snake antivenin will expire this year. Wyeth has no plans to make more. It’s not cost effective. So, I guess if you are going to get bitten by a coral snake, this is the year to do it.

A quick note about Bill Haast, America’s most famous snake man. He injected himself with enough snake venom to become immune to poisonous bites. He was walking, human antivenin. His blood was so full of antibodies that he saved over 20 snake bite victims in his life by just giving them blood transfusions.

Let us return now to the handy rhyme: “Red against yellow will kill a fellow; red against black, venom lack” or “friend of Jack.” Some anonymous herpetologist suggested a new version: “Roses and red, violets are blue: leave the damn snake alone.”

A couple of weeks ago I read a book called “The Lion the Living Room,” which was about how our domestic cats are just little lions. I thought, ‘that’s nothing. I grew up with dinosaurs in the alley.’

They looked for all the world like little dinosaurs – at least to us kids they did. When you’d get down on their level, lying on the ground, seeing them eye to eye, they looked prehistoric and formidable. You had to be careful, being eye to eye that way, because they could shoot blood out of theirs. You also couldn’t stay on the ground too long because the little dinosaurs’ favorite prey would soon be all over you – big red ants – harvester ants. They’d eat 100 of those red ants a day.

The dinosaur I’m talking about, so plentiful in my boyhood, was the horny toad. They were also called horn frogs or horned lizards, and we considered those the scientific names for them. We were wrong, though. The truly scientific name is Phrynosoma Cornutum.

Where have all the horny toads gone? When I was ten, I could walk out in the back alley, a landscape of caliche and goat heads, and you could find dozens of horny toads in just a few minutes. Even though we were barefoot much of the summer, we never went out there barefoot. Stepping on a Lego barefoot is almost imperceptible compared to the attention stepping on a horny toad will command. It will certainly focus your mind as few things can. Goat heads, too, have earned no small share of respect in this regard.

Many people theorize that horny toads, officially listed as endangered in Texas since 1977, have disappeared because of pesticides or the arrival of the fire ants.

“As always, it isn’t one thing,” says Bill Brooks, a founding member of the Horned Lizard Conservation Society of Texas. He told me that “it’s a combination of things” that created a perfect storm of bad news for horny toads.

Brooks said these include the “destruction of habitat, over collection by us humans, feral cats, blue grass taking over, reducing hiding spaces, pesticide use, and yes, also the invasion of fire ants.”

The first challenge for horny toads was the crazy promotions run by businesses, particularly movie theaters and gas stations back in the ’60s. You could get a free or half-priced ticket at some movie theaters by just showing up with a horny toad. Sometimes gas stations would give you a free gallon of gas for a horny toad. I have no idea what they did with them. Perhaps they sold them by putting ads in the back of comic books, the Ebay of that day, and shipped them up north where no doubt their days in some eight year old’s shoe box were numbered. The lion in the living room may have been involved.

Bill Brooks said that he has seen coyotes try to eat them, but rarely successfully. The horny toads release a foul-tasting chemical from their eyes and the coyotes drop them. They are also quite good at puffing themselves up and looking quite menacing which gives them some added protection against coyotes, and snakes, too.

And then the fire ants drove out the red ants, which the horny toads won’t eat. Having been bit by both, I understand their reluctance.

Sadly, the horny toads are fighting a losing battle for survival. You can find them where people are not. There are still a good number on remote ranches. “Around Kenedy,” Bill told me, “there are healthy numbers.”

Just sad to hear of their plight. I do miss the little guys. To me they are as Texas as rattlesnakes, longhorns or Willie Nelson, which is why they are the Official Texas State Reptile.