Local woman bitten by copperhead

Doris Smith remains hospitalized after snake strikes on July 4

This copperhead snake, nearly the length of adult feet end-to-end with the head is tucked under the front part of the body, bity Doris Smith, 87, on the finger while she was picking up sticks in her yard last Saturday.
This copperhead snake, nearly the length of adult feet end-to-end with the head is tucked under the front part of the body, bity Doris Smith, 87, on the finger while she was picking up sticks in her yard last Saturday.

A local woman has been hospitalized since the Fourth of July after she reached down to pick up what she thought was a stick and was struck by a copperhead.

Doris Smith was picking up sticks Saturday on her property off U.S. 54 just west of Jefferson City when she was bit on her right index finger by the 2-foot venomous snake.

"I was up in the garage working on a lawn mower, and I heard her holler, and I looked and saw her waving with her left hand to come down there," said her husband, Charles "Smitty" Smith.

The snake hadn't moved, and Smitty used a board to crush its head and kill it. "I definitely knew it was a copperhead when I killed it," he said.

He then rushed his wife to St. Mary's Hospital, about seven miles away. Within 15 minutes of the bite, they were cleaning the wound and administering morphine. Doris' hand was quickly beginning to swell, he said.

Smitty said they didn't give her an anti-venom, saying they consider that a last resort. He said his wife is almost 88, and that the side effects from anti-venom might do more harm than good.

"It's too late to give her that now, because the poison has gone through her system quite a bit," he said on Monday afternoon. "Her arm's swollen almost up to her shoulder and are starting to turn dark, some places are real dark. It's going to look bad for a long time before it gets (better), but the swelling will start going out today or tomorrow."

So for now, they're mostly keeping the arm elevated and continuing to give her medication to ease the pain.

He said her doctor expects she will recover fully, but that it likely will take a few weeks.

Snakes, including copperheads, are nothing new on the Smiths' 5.5 acres of property.

"When we first moved over there 55 years ago, we killed a lot of copperheads," Smitty said. "Last year, I killed two. So we do have snakes around the place."

He said black snakes on his property have kept copperheads in check - fighting and sometimes killing them - but that he has noticed fewer black snakes on his property in the past two or three years.

"I've been around snakes all my life, so I know what they can do," he said, adding that he's only startled by a snake when it sees him before he sees it.

Venomous snake bites are not common, and deaths from them are rare. Last year, a St. Charles man was the third person in Missouri known to have died from a copperhead bite.

Before retiring as the news services director for the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), Jim Low wrote in a blog: "Snakebite ranks just above falling space debris as a threat to human life."

Jeff Briggler, an MDC herpetologist, said snakes normally start becoming active at night this time of summer and more dormant during the day. But a cool, wet spring has caused them to continue to be more exposed during daylight hours because they still need the warmth of the sun.

"People just need to be very diligent in being aware of their environment," he said.

Smitty seemed to take the incident in stride and with a positive attitude.

You have to have a good attitude when you've raised eight children, he said.

"We've been married 65 years. We'll make it," he said with a laugh.