Rattler gets last bite after man chomps its head
United Press International
Deseret News 8/1/1993
Elton, Va. - When Jarrette Arlo Dean got bit by a rattlesnake, he bit back, and took the critter's head to clean off.
The snake head, severed from its body, bit him twice more before breathing its last.
Dean, 44, who lives in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, is recuperating at home after being hospitalized several days.
"They said it was a miracle he's alive," his 19-year-old daughter, Tina, said Saturday.
Doctors said Dean was in shock when he got to Rockingham Memorial Hospital "and almost dead," according to his daughter.
His family, from a community called Naked Creek, doesn't know what possessed him to bite off the snake's head last Saturday.
"He said it had bit him first so he bit it," his daughter said.
She said her father was riding his bicycle when he spotted the rattler, more than 3 feet long, and got off to catch it. "He's not afraid of snakes," she said.
Holding the snake in one hand, he continued his trip, but the snake bit him on the thumb and fingers, so he headed for a friends house.
When he got there, angry at being snake-bit, he retaliated in kind. But when he went to take the head out of his mouth, the dying snake bit him on the tongue and lip.
Inside the house, his mouth began to swell, so a nephew drove him to the Elkton Emergency Squad, which took him to the hospital.
He was released Wednesday, but his daughter said he could not speak for several days after the incident.
