September 21, 2010

I went out on the south end of town this morning to see a horse who was thought to be bitten by a snake.  Its nose and upper lip was very swollen and his nasal passages were starting to close and make it hard to breath.  Snake bites are not very common here even though you would think they were being in the desert so I was thinking more along the lines of an allergic reaction to an insect or something else.  I enjoyed the drive because it was through Red Rock Canyon which is kind of a shortcut from the west side of Las Vegas to get to the southwest side of Vegas without having to go through the city or have the traffic of 2-15.  The cliffs your drive along have a beautiful red streak of rock that courses through one of the areas that give the canyon its name.  I have always meant to go hiking up there but have not made the time yet.  There are some clients there along the way that I have visited in Bonnie Springs and Calico Basin.  Whenever I go through there I get a really feeling of the old west even though we aren’t that far out of town.  There are wild burrows that range along there and on one occasion I came over a rise in the road to see 3 of them standing in the middle of the road.  I slowed down but they didn’t move as I approached.  When I was less than 10 feet away I finally came to a stop as they stayed like statues staring at me in my lane until I stopped and then they walked up along side of me to the passenger window where a technician was sitting and peering in the window and stuck up his upper lip as if to ask for a treat.  I am sure they have been feed by many a driver by and have learned that if they stop cars bay standing in the road it usually results in a treat.  I honked my horn and they bolted off into the brush.

Back to my horse with a swollen nose.  When I arrived at the place I began to think more seriously about it really being a snake bite.  The horse was kept way out in a hilly, deserty area that looked like a perfect area to encounter a rattle snake.  The poor horse’s nose was hugely swollen from the middle of the face down.  It was almost funny to look at because he looked like Bullwinkle the Moose from Rocky and Bullwinkle.  He could breath adequately but he did make a loud blocked nasal passage noise when he inspired.  The owner had been hosing his face off with cool water and said that the swelling had gone down just in the little while she had done that.  At this point I gave him a shot of anti-inflammatory Banamine and  a steroid to take down the swelling as quick as possible.  He usually gets fed in a tin feeder on the ground so I walked into his stall and removed the hay from the bottom of the feeder because I want him to keep his head up or the swelling will not be able to go away as quickly.  I thought about tipping it over to dump out the alfalfa leaves at the bottom because he was leaning down vacuuming them up but decided that he would be done soon and it wasn’t worth the trouble.  I vaccinated the horse for tetanus because rattle snake bites are notorious for causing secondary clostridial infections and they can cause really necrotic wounds where they bite.  Not a lot more else to do because anti-venom is available but to treat a grown horse it might cost thousands of dollars and usually not necessary because its rarely fatal though it can damage the muscle of the hart and weeks later the horse may fall over dead.  So I left telling her that as long as the horse can breath at this point there is not much we can do anyway.

Later that night I got a call confirming that her horse definitely was bitten by a rattle snake.  She was cleaning his stall and turned over his feeder and there was a 2 foot diamond back rattle snake coiled up hiding.  A chill ran up my spine thinking that I had been down in the bottom of the feeder cleaning out hay that morning and likely slid my hand over the snake with only a thin layer of sheet metal between me and it.