{"id":567273,"date":"2026-08-13T01:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T01:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/567273\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T01:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T01:02:10","slug":"us-high-school-football-player-finds-venomous-snake-in-his-helmet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/567273\/","title":{"rendered":"US high school football player finds venomous snake in his helmet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A high school American football player in Arkansas had every right to be rattled after finding a venomous snake inside his helmet during practice.<\/p>\n<p>The Maumelle High student felt unusual movement inside his headgear following warm-ups last week and brought his helmet to an assistant coach for inspection. A slithering 2-foot cottonmouth was discovered behind some padding.<\/p>\n<p>The pit viper was so reluctant to exit the helmet that animal control officers had to submerge the helmet in water and force the snake out, grabbing it with tongs. Animal services technicians identified the snake as a deadly cottonmouth. It was released in a wooded area.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-player-wore-the-helmet-for-more-than-an-hour-L77B5SHGX5ER5ENWIFIXIBGHBM.jpg\" alt=\"The player wore the helmet for more than an hour. \" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" loading=\"eager\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"ImageMetadata__MetadataParagraph-sc-hi5x8q-0 cWTYyG image-metadata\">The player wore the helmet for more than an hour.  (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n<p>Cottonmouths are the second-most venomous snakes found in Arkansas.<\/p>\n<p>Animal services director Chris Davis said the player wore the helmet for nearly an hour and was fortunate he wasn&#8217;t bitten.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was unreal,&#8221; Davis said. \u201cYou had to kind of be there and take pictures to say this was real.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The player grabbed a different helmet and continued practice. But the situation caused the head coach to reiterate to his team that players should examine their equipment carefully before using it, checking for insects \u2014 or maybe something larger and more dangerous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A high school American football player in Arkansas had every right to be rattled after finding a venomous&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[50,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-567273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-animals","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}