Just weeks into spring, the hiking trails are busy. Snake rescuers want to send a reminder that if we think the weather is beautiful to be out in \u2014 then snakes do too.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, two adults, one in Orange County<\/a> and the other in Ventura County<\/a>, died from rattlesnake bites.<\/p>\n Kids don\u2019t seem to mind snakes as much as the adults NBC 7’s Shandel Menezes spoke with at a San Diego County park.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if it’s not a rattlesnake, I’m scared,\u201d said occasional hiker, Christina Soltero. \u201cIt doesn’t matter, they\u2019re just creepy.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOnly about 20% of snakes in the U.S. are venomous, but those bites can cause serious trouble. Here\u2019s what to know if someone is bitten by a snake.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n That classic rattle sends a lot of them running in the other direction, even to their phones to call “Trapper Pat.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey can call me anytime of any day, I’m usually about 15 minutes away,\u201d said snake rescuer, Pat Brady. \u201cThat’s my little jingle \u2026 I’ve taken 978 rattlesnakes, I think in the last five-and-a-half, six years.\u201d<\/p>\n Pets are taking strikes too.\u00a0Doctor of veterinary medicine, Rob Brooks, is a surgeon at Stitch Veterinary Urgent Care and Surgery in Miramar Ranch North. He said he\u2019s seen an uptick in rattlesnake bites over the last few weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether the dog stuck its head into a hole and got bitten, or managed to find the snake and pick it up, it very certainly can be fatal if a bite doesn’t get treated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Avoiding them is a good start for pets and people, but if the bite has already happened, antivenom is the next best thing.<\/p>\n \u201cMy first move would be to find a pen or a sharpie and circle the bite and write the time on it because that’s the first thing they\u2019re going to want to know,\u201d Brady said.<\/p>\n Brady also said the time to stay diligent is April through at least October.<\/p>\n There have been about 80 rattlesnake bites reported across California so far this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just weeks into spring, the hiking trails are busy. Snake rescuers want to send a reminder that if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[163,85,46,29630,141,70696,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-374100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-san-diego-county","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-southern-california","14":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}