Mike Zerwekh was surprised how quickly he started to feel the rattlesnake’s bite.

The dryness in the mouth, the tingly sensation throughout his body. And then he began to have muscle spasms, a reaction that surprised him.

Fortunately, he was only about 100 yards away from his vehicle when the snake struck him as he walked alone in tall grass in the Santa Ana Mountains in Orange County’s Cleveland National Forest on the unseasonably sweltering day in mid-April.

Always careful in his footsteps, Zerwekh, a field biologist, hadn’t seen the snake coming. There was also no rattle before the twin fangs tore into his left calf.

Only after the attack did he catch a glimpse of the retreating black snake, about 3 feet long.

Inside the car and driving toward help, Zerwekh, 26, struggled to steer the vehicle as the muscle contractions became increasingly violent. It was the battle of his life to stay on the road.

He didn’t know it at the time, but those spasms are unique to the type of rattlesnake that bit him – the Southern Pacific.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before he came upon law enforcement and ambulance personnel who were on the road ahead, responding to a traffic accident.

Dr. Sean Bush, a professor of emergency room medicine and emergency room physician at Loma Linda University Medical Center and venomous snake expert, said that when Zerwekh was brought into the ER, his “bizarre muscle movement” was a reaction he’d seen before, but only from some Southern Pacific rattlesnake bites.

And antivenom treatments will do nothing to stop it.

“He was twitching like worms were under his skin,” said Bush.

Zerwekh recalls medical students throughout the hospital streaming into his room to observe the painful, involuntary motions that racked his body.

The twitching subsided significantly the following day, and was gone the day after that, Zerwekh said.

Mature snakes in this rattlesnake species, indigenous to a vast section of Southern California, are often coal black. Sometimes a diamondback pattern is faintly visible; sometimes not. The snake’s dark coloration allows them to survive better at higher elevations than other rattlesnakes, Bush said.

Southern Pacific rattlesnakes are likely the most common variety of rattlesnake in area mountains and have been found at elevations as high as 11,000 feet. They are also seen along rolling coastal hills, Bush said.

These snakes are potentially the most dangerous of the rattlesnakes found in Southern California, Bush said. Even more dangerous than the Mojave green, which has a neurotoxin that can halt breathing or the much larger Western Diamondback, found in the desert near the Arizona border.

The twitching reaction Zerwekh experienced can likely be traced to a new toxin discovered in the Southern Pacific’s venom earlier this year named hellerase.

Further analysis may prove hellerase to be a previously unknown neurotoxin, he said.

The reason Bush calls the Southern Pacific the most dangerous area snake is because it is potentially a triple threat with three types of venom.

It has the traditional rattlesnake venom that attacks red blood cells and tissues. It can have the newly discovered hellerase toxin. And some groups of Southern Pacific rattlers have also been found to have the lethal neurotoxin found in the Mojave green rattlesnakes.

Southern Pacific rattlesnakes in the San Jacinto Mountains have the Mojave Green’s neurotoxin, in addition to the blood attacking chemical, which Mojave Green rattlers don’t have, Bush said.

Southern Pacific rattlesnakes in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains don’t seem to have this neurotoxin, Bush said.

Bush stressed that the behavior of the Southern Pacific rattlesnake does not make it more dangerous than others.

“It is not particularly a biter. It does not go after people,” he said.

Having recovered from the likely hellerase-induced spasms and able to slowly walk in the hospital, Zerwekh, a Moreno Valley resident, was not out of danger early last week.

Doctors wanted him to remain in LLUMC so they could watch and regulate his platelet count so that he did not suffer massive bleeding, Zerwekh said.

He was discharged Friday.

Snake season tips

Wear boots that cover the ankle;

Step back from the sound after hearing a rattle;

Stay on trails;

Be alert for a snake hiding at edge of a trail;

Don’t go where you can’t see where your feet are landing;

Don’t reach over a rock where you can’t see.

Source: Bruce Lamarche – Sierra Madre search and rescue team