Rattlesnake Bites Social Media Star, Sends Him to UF Health Shands ICU: ‘Welp, I’m Cooked'

WXJB ^

[nickcarraway]

A social media influencer and wildlife enthusiast was hospitalized after a rattlesnake bit him in Dixie County.

David Humphlett, @adventorin on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, travels the United States to find and showcase wildlife, particularly snakes and other reptiles.

The Gainesville resident was searching for snakes on Dec. 18 on Shired Island in Dixie County when a diamondback rattlesnake found him first.

“Welp, I’m cooked,” Humphlett said on video moments after the snake bit his leg. “Alright, that right there is a fantastic Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake that I just got bit in the leg by when I was peeling bark.”

He was peeling bark around a tree in an effort to find another type of snake when he startled the viper.

“And then I just felt, out of nowhere, this intense pain, right in my leg. Honestly, it felt like an alligator,” Humphlett said.

He rushed to a Cross City fire station where he was then taken to UF Health Shands by helicopter.

“My reaction was just like dang it, this is really bad,” Humphlett recounted. “I might lose my leg. It was petty scary because my whole body went numb head to toe.”

A familiar face was waiting for him at the hospital. His wife, a UF Health nurse, was at work.

“Internally, I’m panicking but externally, I’m reassuring him, ‘You’re going to be fine,’” said Emma Rynear, Humphlett’s wife. “My team here at work helped me run down to the emergency room to be right there as the helicopter landed.”

Doctors gave him 88 vials of antivenom as his leg swelled from the snake’s venom. After 13 days, he remains in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.

The couple says the community’s support has been incredible.

“That’s just the God we serve,” said Rynear. “He turns things that seem crappy and makes them really beautiful.”

Despite the life-threatening run-in with the rattlesnake, Humphlett doesn’t blame the animal and views the incident as an educational moment.

“The snake is just doing what it does. It perceived me as a threat and it was just trying to protect itself. I’m not mad at the snake and I don’t want anyone else to be mad at the snake either,” said Humphlett.

He is excited to get back into the wild once released from the hospital. He and his wife set up a gofundme to help pay for Humphlett’s medical bills.

[ponygirl]

African Boomslang. Most awesome name since Howitzer Kaboom.

[cyclotic]

My wife lived in Dixie County Florida for a year when she was a kid. You can’t get more redneck than there.

[Alas Babylon!]

I don’t know, man. I think it’d be far worse to see the one that bites you before it does. That would mean you didn’t take proper care.

[gitmo]

I stepped on a Cotton Mouth once. (I’m a zoologist and know my snakes).

Luckily, my waders protected me from his repeated strikes at my leg.

[HonkyTonkMan]

The Gainesville resident was searching for snakes when a diamondback rattlesnake found him first.

That's a great line and makes me think of "you ain't from 'round heyah son."

Papa always said, you go looking for trouble, you might find it.

[Pilsner]

Then you get mongooses to take care of the snake.

No. The mongoose is famous for killings cobras. Rattlesnakes, moccasins, and copperheads, are all pit vipers, meaning they sense their prey by heat using pits in their heads, then make a lightening fast strike.

Cobras are not pit vipers, and strike less rapidly. Pit vipers will kill, and eat, a mongoose.

[KevinB]

Rattlers are quite docile. If you don’t mess with them, they won’t mess with you.

[TexasGator]

“Let me ask you as the expert then;”

OK. Rattle snake milking was NOT banned in the US in the time frame you referenced.

[rlmorel]

I read a hilarious account of the filming of a movie (might have been “True Grit”, but I can’t be sure) and they had a snake wrangler bring a bunch of rattlers in to include in the film.

They are apparently so sensitive to heat that they became so sluggish in the direct sun that they had to keep swapping them in and out.

When they started out, people on the set were scared to death of them and were constantly glancing at them, looking at them, keeping away, but after a while, they could have one a few feet away but be drinking coffee or reading their script and wouldn’t even bother to look a them.

IIRC, the director was losing his temper because the damn snakes just wouldn’t get active enough to make them threatening, and they had to keep putting fresh ones out!

[rlmorel]

That one of the shark “stepping on a lego” makes me laugh every time I see it!

[dagunk]

Had rattlesnakes at the worksite, among others. We left them alone because they kept the vermin - rats, mice - down.

Snakebite just make you sick. Rats etc carry black plague, hantavirus, probably some other goodies I didn’t know about. Stuff that can kill you.

Helluva choice.

Range kept antivenom on hand.

[John S Mosby]

Moccasins are far more dangerous than rattlesnakes. For one thing, they have no rattles to warn with, which rattlers do all the time- you’re right they are good at hiding and do not want encounters with predators. Moccasins on the other hand are near or in water/swamp and so dark have a hard time seeing them. Their bite wound is quite dangerous and the wound even well treated can rot tissue from the toxins- having to have amputations or skin grafts to replace the dead tissue. Finally, they are quite aggressive and will chase people on land and even in water.
Reminds me of the black mamba with a similar reputation and greater speed. Many years ago colleagues and I used to hunt/collect snakes and another had a business milking pit viper snakes for venom to make anti-venin serum for bite kits. He almost lost his whole arm when struck by a king cobra he was milking (and had milked for years- just made a bad move to grab it).

[John S Mosby]

They get that large in extreme age over 20 years old- and usually try to stay out of harm’s way. Eat their weight in rodents/rats/mice, and even other snakes. That big indeed.

[KevinB]

Great story!

[rlmorel]

I sure do respect them. When I was a kid, I lived in Yokosuka, Japan for several years, and used to walk through the walled hospital compound all the time (it was pretty big with what I think was a ten foot concrete wall all around it)

They had some greenhouse looking windows that protruded in some area, and they had snakes in them. I used to keep white rats as pets, and when I stopped and looked at the snakes, there were often dead white rats in the cage, which got my attention.

I did not know until years later that those were most likely snakes maintained for their venom to produced antivenin. (The Japanese had one common pit viper that was native, they called it the Mamushi IIRC.)

This was during the Vietnam War, and I also heard later in life that the large naval hospital on that base was the source of much of the Antivenin that was supplied to bitten troops in Southeast Asia.

I was clueless at the time, though and wondered why there would be snakes displayed like that on the hospital grounds.

[Getready]

His next adventure....go to South Chicago looking for gunshot victims...

[rlmorel]

I lived in Subic Bay as a kid, and one day while we were waiting for the bus, my friend next door (the son of a USMC Colonel) rushed up and told me they had a snake in their house.

They lived next door to us, and we had these houses with a carport and the bottom floor that you walked into from the carport was kind of like a three season room with screens and plastic sheeting, not really sealed off, had drainage pipes a few inches across open to the outside, and the snake must have crawled in through one of them.

Someone had called base security, so some kind of animal control person was on the way, but...nobody was watching the snake or near the door. We ran over at top speed, and cautiously opened the door to peek in.

In the far corner, there was, motionless, what looked like a heavy black rubber garden hose, but a lot thicker than a garden hose, but stacked in a coil like a garden hose would be.

Someone came by and shooed us away, and we had to get on the bus, but found out later it was a King Cobra, and a good sized one, too!

My other best friend's father was a LCDR who was a hospital administrator at the base hospital up near Cubi Point, and he had some kind of formal interaction/function with the SERE (survival training) program that they ran up there for pilots during the Vietnam War.

I was so jealous-he was one grade below me in school, and his sister was in my grade, but...his two older brothers were juniors and seniors in high school. These guys got to do everything, they had scuba gear, Hawaiian slings, and honest to goodness spear guns! They had special jackets they wore around with their names embroidered on them...one had "Jake" and the younger one had "Lucifer"! (I never found out what the deal was with that embroidered name...it was likely edgy and rebellious) I was in awe of this guy's older brothers.

One day when I was over at his house and everyone was gone, he said "You want to see something really cool?" (of course I did)

He went over to a hall closet, and pulled down what looked like a rolled up fire hose. He rolled it down the hall to unfold it, and...I was a giant snake skin! It was cool-and yeah, I was impressed! His father had apparently shot it up there at the SERE site where they did the training.

This picture appeared in the paper one day taken at the airfield fire house in the Cubi Point area, so they must have had a lot of these things over there! (I was told they found this one wrapped around the axle of a fire truck!)

[rlmorel]

LOL, I wish I could remember where I read it-I don’t think I did it justice!

[Getready]

Maybe this message will dawn on some of these folks: namely,...... sometimes nature is trying to kill us.

[Olog-hai]

Either way, it’s part of actively seeking them out.