I've had a couple of nips from my garters over the last few years. One raised a pin-prick of blood, but today takes the award for most severe bite I've had.

It was one of two checkered girls that Greg took in as a rescue and I agreed to take on, she's called Esme (after a cantankerous old witch in the Discworld books). Esme is probably 2 or 3 years old, but we don't know what with her being a rescue snake. This is their third feed with me, and Esme has worked out where the food comes from, she was in full on feeding mode and decided she was going to exit the tub she was in, so I moved my hand to put her back in and she latched onto my middle finger.
I took the same approach as past bites, let her decide when she will let go. The longest anyone else has hung on has been about 5 seconds as Nobby attempted to disengage her teeth.

Esme was chewing down and drawing my finger right to the back of her mouth - bearing in mind that she was biting from the side of my middle finger about halfway down I didn't rate her chances of swallowing.

The bite wasn't what I'd call painful, but each jaw movement was like another needle being jabbed into my finger. I realised that she wasn't going to let go, so slipped my thumb nail under her top jaw as she chewed, it was a good plan because she started to let go and had nearly let go so I moved my thumb. She took another bite.

She'd been latched on for around two minutes and was actually starting to sting a little. She was still chewing when I called the wife in to help, by the time Char had brought in a bowl of cold water Esme had been chewing for nearly five minutes (Char had to laugh before helping me). The bowl of water got Esme to release, and she was popped into a rub.

So, time for the first couple of photos, one of the bite before I mopped the blood, the second after I'd wiped the blood off:





There's actually one main laceration, and three others that aren't so bad. None of them are particularly deep. The bloody wounds lacerations are on the side from the upper jaw, the lower jaw only caused a couple of pin-pricks.

It was a bit sore straight away, but I expected that. I carried on and fed her tank mate, Gytha. And then gave Esme a couple more pieces of fish and pinkie (she still deserved to eat properly today). Then I fed my big girls, so I guess it was about 10-15 minutes after the bite that I realised my finger was swelling up.

Half an hour after the bite my finger was swollen enough that I could only bend it about halfway. It's now been 3 hours and I still can't bend my finger. This picture was taken 45 minutes after the bite, and this is still about as far as I can bend it now.



As you can see, the wound itself isn't significant enough as a cut to cause swelling. So that gives us something in the saliva, namely the venom from the Duvorney Gland. There could be some argument that I've had an allergic reaction to the saliva, but there is no itchiness, no redness around the bite. It's just some localised oedema. Some soreness in the tips of my the neighbouring fingers, and a bit of aching in my hand. I did have a bit of dull headache, but I think that may not be down to the bite. I also had a funny taste in my mouth, again, I don't know if that is associated with the bite but I don't have anything else to put it down to.

I know there's been some discussion in the past as to how severe the venom is, and how bad a garter bite can be. I can attest that this bite is actually quite uncomfortable considering it was from a snake that isn't considered to have a serious bite. It's not going to kill me, and my finger isn't going to drop off.

I thought it was an account worth sharing as I've seen posts about bites, but don't remember any first-hand accounts of envenomation.