Outdoors with Larry Dablemont: Adders and vipers

This is a dangerous time for copperheads. Many move onto pavement or concrete at night seeking the warmth it has absorbed. Some lady wrote me a letter about the little hog-nose snake I found a week or so ago, telling me that there are no vipers or adders in this country. She quoted a book she was familiar with. It is typical of so many who proclaim themselves naturalists and outdoorsmen to go by what they find in books. They gain their knowledge almost entirely from what some "expert" has written.  

The terms "spreading adder" or "hog-nosed viper" are common names for the harmless little snake, given to them by Ozark rural people. Technically, there are no adders in the U.S., but there are indeed vipers in this country. Rattlesnakes, cottonmouths and copperheads are known as "pit vipers."  Technically speaking, the hog nose viper, as he is referred to in many books, is poisonous, or more correctly venomous. He uses a venom to stun toads which is his preferred food. His venom would indeed have a mild effect on humans. His small fangs are in the rear of his mouth, and he has not been known to bite anyone. And another reader wrote that we have venomous snakes, not poisonous ones, indignant that I used such a term. Guess I spend too much time outdoors and not enough time reading. But I spent years studying the books too, so I know the scientific names and technical language.

So many people interested in the outdoors spend so much more time with books than they do outdoors using their eyes, ears and common sense. And while I am going to upset lots of people by saying this, there are many, many errors found in some books. Writers often are convinced they know something for certain which another observer of nature may find off base. The more time I spend outdoors, the more I understand that "never" or "always" seldom fits.  And the more mistakes I find in books! Certainties exist in some regions that do not exist in others, and adaptations take place that change what we knew decades ago.

A Canadian attack

            I took my daughter Christy to Canada on October 7 to fish some wilderness waters near Nestor Falls Ontario. We got there at midnight, got a good night’s sleep and woke up just after sunup to the dawn of a beautiful day. Or so I thought!

I looked out the window of our cabin to the gentle waves on the lake and began to plan the day. But the Good Lord had other plans, I reckon! I was suddenly hit with a hard bolt of pain at the left center of my chest and there was no doubt what it was. In minutes my daughter was driving me back to a small hospital in International Falls Minnesota, an hour and a half away.

A doctor there gave me some medicine to stop the pain, and it was a tremendous relief. About four hours later he had a helicopter landing just outside and finally they loaded me into it, and we headed for Duluth where there was a nearly new hospital with several cardiologists.

We landed just after sunset on the seventeenth floor of Duluth’s St. Mary’s hospital overlooking Lake Superior. I was whisked into ICU and met the senior cardiologist who began all kinds of testing and told me they would do surgery the next morning. Twenty-four hours later they added three stents where there had been two put into small arteries many years ago. I guess maybe they had rusted out! At any rate I thank the great Creator that there was no damage to my heart.

My daughter drove down to Duluth in my pickup and stayed there in the hospital to be of help to me, and the nurses and doctors there were wonderful. On the third day a heart doctor spent an hour with a black board diagramming what had happened and what they had done to me. When he found out it was my birthday he brought two pieces of cake in for Christy and I. For four days they made sure there was no lasting effects and then dismissed me. We finally headed home.

I am feeling great now and will head back to Canada this weekend to get my boat and camera and fishing gear. If a blizzard doesn’t come, the fishing will be great and Christy will finally get a chance to sample it.

Remember that I had that heart attack a full day before it was fixed and yet there is no lasting effect. If you experience that heart pain, get it examined quickly and be confident that you will recover as I did. My father went through the same thing many years back and ignored it because after a time it subsided. The result was heart damage. Don’t let that happen to you—there are a lot more fish to be caught.