A 24-year-old snake handler was bitten by one of the world's most poisonous vipers at a commercial reptile showplace in Hicksville, N.Y., Sunday afternoon, but was flown by helicopter to a Bronx hospital that is the regional center for snakebite treatments and was in serious but stable condition Sunday night.
The handler, Robert McDonald, employed by the Long Island Reptile Expo in Hicksville, was giving water to the snake, a West African Gaboon viper, when he was bitten on the right hand at 4:07 p.m., Nassau County police said. The venom attacks the central nervous system and can be fatal unless treated promptly.Under a 15-year-old procedure for snakebite emergencies, McDonald was flown to Jacobi Medical Center, arriving at 5:05 p.m., Susan Mueller, a hospital spokeswoman, said. The hospital, meanwhile, got antivenin from the Bronx Zoo. A team trained in treating snakebites, led by Dr. Charles Martinez, administered the serum intravenously.
Mueller said that bites by the West African Gaboon viper were extremely rare. Herpetologists say there have been perhaps only a score of such bites in this country. The last known case was that of a 16-year-old boy who nearly died of a bite after stealing two of the snakes from the National Zoo in Washington in 1983.
Marlin Perkins, the host of television's "Wild Kingdom" program for many years, who died in 1986, was one person who survived a bite by a Gaboon viper.
The adult viper has the longest fangs and the largest venom sacs of any snake.