Another Personal First

While growing up, I was the only person in my immediate family of four who had not broken a bone or suffered an injury requiring at least one overnight in hospital.

Then at age 19, that streak came to a spectacular end when I shattered the ball of my left shoulder after slipping on a patch of ice. Four days in hospital and eight hours of surgery later to fuse the break with nine screws driven into my upper arm, I was in a load of pain and humbled with the knowledge that my shoulder would never have full mobility again.

Funny how fate seems to work that way - that is, reserving that guy who thought he got away with something a cosmic comeuppance dealt out in spades.

Well, in the world of personal injuries the one I just experienced doesn't come within a light-year of my big shoulder injury.

I was bit by a snake, albeit a non-venomous one, while attempting to clean out my snow corn snake Lola's terrarium and add new bedding. What's odd is that this is hardly the first time I've done so - sure, in the past Lola would get nervous and wrap her roughly 30 inch length around my arm - but in a few minutes would relax while I placed her in a small holding container while I finished my cleaning job.

But this time, when I tried to pick Lola up, she quickly wrapped herself around my right wrist and sunk her little fangs into my ring finger. Immediately, I couldn't help thinking about a recent episode of Dirty Jobs (a personal fave, by the way) when host Mike Rowe was punctured several times by Lake Erie water snakes in Ohio. But those snakes were a helluva lot bigger than mine, which made it no less painful when Lola kept biting me for a full two minutes before realizing she was in no real danger and let go while still wrapped around my wrist.

Good girl.

All is well now, but I can safely check off "Bitten By Snake" off my "Things I've Never Experienced In This Life" list.

All things considered, I guess I'm no Steve Irwin, not that he was never bitten by snakes before.