Ranger bitten by Cobra


About 1 year ago there was terrible incident at one of our neighbouring game reserves.

An Egyptian cobra was found in the lodge and obviously being a safety hazard to the guests, had to be removed. One of the rangers that was there at the time decided to try and catch the snake and in the process he was bitten on the hand!

He held on to the snake and very calmly went to his house, which was at the lodge to go fetch a bag to put the snake into. He needed to take the snake to the hospital with him to make a positive identification on it so as to be given the right treatment.

About ten minutes after the bite one of the other staff members found the ranger dead outside of his car with the snake inside a bag next to him!
He was either bitten in a main artery, sending the venom straight to his heart or possibly even allergic to bees as normally a bite from an Egyptian cobra takes about an hour or two to kill the average person.

People that are allergic to bees often have a worse reaction to certain snake venoms and can die earlier as a result

3 comments:

Liz said...

Amazing how the snake biting exactly in the right place brought on such a rapid death. Poor guy. I guess if someone is way out in the bush and they get bitten - their chances wouldn't be very good of surviving not if anti-venom for the right species of snake isn't on hand. Great blog as always.fsm

Ailurophile said...

Gosh that's terrible. The poor guy. You are right. The venom may have been injected in a major vessel or perhaps the ranger was allergic. Sad, in any case.

Holiday in South Africa said...

I always avoid to be face to face with this snake.