Uh.....duh?

Ore. man puts snake in his mouth, nearly dies

10:59 AM PDT on Tuesday, September 18, 2007

By TERESA BELL-BLACKMAN and SCOTT BURTON, KGW Staff

A Portland man nearly died after putting a pet rattlesnake into his mouth to show off for friends.

Matt Wilkenson admitted that he made a poor decision, but he’d been drinking and messing around with friends and apparently lost some common sense.

“It's actually kind of my own stupid fault,” he told KGW.

Wilkenson said he’s always felt comfortable with his pet snakes and he thinks they could sense that.

“Their tails would be rattling you reach your hand in the cage and they're more scared of you than you are of them and they wouldn't strike,” he explained.

So when he was showing off his reptile relations with friends, he thought it would be fun to put the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake into his mouth and make them laugh.

However this test of fate was not laughable at all.

The rattlesnake latched onto the back of his throat and sent venom surging into his body.

“Me being me, I put his head in my mouth,” Wilkenson recalled. “At first it felt like someone just gave me a shot in the mouth."

And within seconds, his tongue began to swell up, fill his mouth and cut off his airway.

"When your arm falls asleep and it's like a painful fall asleep, it's like that, but 10 times stronger and it was just my whole body,” he told KGW.

Wilkenson was dying and the pressure forced blood out of his nose. Doctors later told him the snake had shot enough venom in his body to kill as many as 15 people.

He was losing his life as he arrived at Oregon Health and Science University but quick-thinking doctors inserted a breathing tube in his throat and injected anti-venom into his body.

Wilkenson was also put into a medical-induced coma for three days, to give his body time to recover.

Miraculously, it all worked and three weeks later, he’s doing well. The hole in his throat is healing properly and doctors said he’s on the path to a full recovery.

Wilkenson said he’s still a snake guy, but he learned his lesson.

“I still love snakes, but I'll take a little more care in handling them,” he said.

As for the pet rattlesnake, it no longer lives at Wilkenson’s house. But he does still have a young bull snake as a pet that is not venomous.