Monday, October 8, 1956

The sun was just breaking through the clouds as we turned off the highway onto the long gravel road to Margery’s house. It had been a long drive to Smith River, and it would be good to get out and stretch my legs.

Mom warned me about the long drive and said I would be the only kid here since it was a school day. Still, I begged to come along to the family gathering to celebrate Auntie Dee’s birthday. I was used to entertaining myself, so being the only kid didn’t worry me.

“Robert wanted me to make sure I got all the information about Mid’s new TV,” Aunt Lila said as Mom steered around the last corner. “He is determined to put an antenna on top of our hill and string the wire all the way to the house.”

“That sounds expensive,” Mom said. “How does he know it will work?”

“He had a guy come out, and he could pick up a station from Eugene at the top of our hill,” Aunt Lila said. “And yes, it is going to be expensive. but David probably knows, after our trip this summer, TV is pretty nice.”

“I don’t know. It just costs a lot of money,” I said from the back seat, remembering the TV sets in some of the motel rooms on the east coast that you had to put dimes or quarters in the box on the side of it to turn on the thing.

“Yes, that is right,” Aunt Lila said. “Ours won’t have a money box on it, but it still will cost a lot of money.”

We pulled into the driveway. There was a large two-story, white farmhouse on the left and a large barn on the right, located about fifty yards from the house. Sparse pasture land behind the barn faded into a series of low sand dunes. I could hear the waves when I opened the car door. The ocean was not far.

The house was packed, and all the women were in the kitchen when we came through the door. 

Auntie Dee hugged me.

“David, what are you doing here today?” she asked. “You should be in school.”

“When he heard we were celebrating your birthday, he begged to come,” Mom said. “I couldn’t refuse.”

With that said, the chatter in the kitchen started, and I headed to the living room, where all the men were in front of the TV set.

“You better watch this, David,” Uncle Rodney said. “The guy pitching is named Larsen, and he might be a cousin of yours.”

“I don’t have any Larsen cousins,” I said. 

“You never know,” Uncle Rodney said. “Your dad doesn’t know that side of his family. Besides, this is the World Series.”

I didn’t know anything about baseball. I had heard about the World Series, but it didn’t mean anything to me. I found a seat and watched for a few minutes.

“You are going to get into trouble for missing school,” Uncle Duke said.

“Mom will write a note and say that I was ill,” I said.

“What does ill mean?” Uncle Rodney asked. “You don’t look very sick to me.”

“That’s what she writes when I stay home to go fishing,” I said. “I don’t need to go to school all the time. I learn faster than the other kids.”

“You skip school to go fishing?” Mid asked.

“I learn a lot when I am fishing,” I said.

“I bet you do,” Mid said. “You keep it up. I like to see a kid who likes to fish.”

I found a seat and watched the game for a couple of minutes. It was really boring. I headed to the barn.

I loved old barns. Every one of them was different but alike in so many ways. Margery, Auntie Dee’s daughter, and Mid had lived here a long time. This barn still had stalls for the workhorses, and they probably hadn’t used horses in the fields since the war.

The harnesses were still hung by the stalls, and unlike Grandpa’s harnesses, these were still soft and well-oiled. They smelled like good leather. 

I looked through the barn and ran a few chickens out of the mangers. I gathered as many eggs as I could hold in the front of my tee shirt and headed to the kitchen.

“Oh, thank you, David,” Margery said when I came through the door with a shirt full of fresh eggs. “I didn’t have time to gather any eggs this morning. You are such a great help.”

Margery unloaded the eggs, and I returned to the barn. After another trip through the barn, I headed out over the sand dune toward the ocean. By the time I got to the top of the hill, I could see the ocean.

“This would be a great place to watch for Russian submarines,” I said as I found a tuff of grass to sit on for a time. After ten or fifteen minutes, I decided that no submarines were nearby, so I returned to the house.

“What have you been up to?” Uncle Rodney asked as I was looking for a place to sit.

“I gathered some eggs from the mangers and looked through the barn,” I said. “Then I walked out to the ocean and watched for Russian submarines for a time.”

“Russian submarines, did you see any?” Uncle Duke asked.

“No, but this would be a good place for them to land,” I said. “There is nobody around to see them for a long way in each direction.”

“You better give up watching for those submarines and watch the end of this ball game,” Mid said. “Your cousin is about ready to pitch a perfect game.”

We all sat and watched the game come to an end. A guy named Yogi ran out and jumped up on the pitcher at the end of the game.

Don Larsen had just pitched a perfect game in game five of the 1956 World Series. The New York Yankees had beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in that game, and they would go on to win the World Series that year. And this was the first sporting event that I ever watched on TV.

Snake Bit in Sweet Home, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I always told folks that if they wanted to get a veterinarian to treat Salmon Disease in the dog, don’t go to Kansas. Likewise, if you’re going to get a veterinarian to treat a snake bite, don’t come to Sweet Home. Actually, I have treated one local snake bite, and it was on a horse.

The call came in the early afternoon on a hot August day of 1977.

“Doc, I have a horse with a large swelling on his chest,” Bob said. “I was wondering if you could come up and get a look at him.”

Bob was a young man, maybe a few years older than me. He was well built, and his skin was deeply tanned. I suspect it was a farmer’s tan. He wore a wide brim hat with a snakeskin band on it.

“Sure, Bob, I can get up this afternoon,” I said. “I will need directions, and maybe a hint as to what you think might have happened.”

“I live on a small place upon the top of Fern Ridge,” Bob said. “It’s on the right side of the road, has a large white house and an old barn, you can’t miss it.”

“And, do you have any idea what happened to the horse?” I asked again.

Bob pointed to the band on his hat. “We have a few of these critters around up there. We see them more this time of the year. They tell me there is an old rock quarry over the hill from us a little way.”

A little later, I pulled onto Bob’s place. He had the horse tied to the fence a short distance up the hill from the barn. I surmised that what Bob was seeing was a large abscess if it was a snake bite. I was not confident that a snake could strike a horse in the chest, however.

Looking at the horse, a large grey gelding named Joe, everything was fine except for the sizeable fluctuant swelling on the right side of his chest, over his pectoral muscles.

I shaved the swelling. There in the middle of the swelling were two deep red fang marks.

“It must be a snake bite, alright,” I said. “I don’t see how a snake could strike this high.”

“I have this road that runs up the hill, and there is a steep bank on one side,” Bob said. “It could easily happen if the snake was on that bank.”

“How many snakes do you see around the place?” I asked.

“Not many, this one,” Bob says as he points to his hatband. “And the one that bit the horse. That’s enough for me. Folks say this is about the only area where they are found around Sweet Home.”

“How did you find that one?” I said, pointing to the hatband.

“I walked into the barn one afternoon, the cat was standing in a corner with a mouse in his mouth. This snake has him cornered in a standoff,” Bob says, pointing to his hatband again. “I ran back to the house and got my 22 pistol and decided the argument in favor of the cat.”

“Some story, that might make a person a little worried about doing anything under the barn,” I said.

“For sure,” Bob said. “What do you think about this bite on the horse?”

“I think this happened a few days ago, maybe more,” I said. “Just a big abscess right now. I will open that, drain the pus and flush the wound. Then give antibiotics and tetanus vaccination, and that should do it. You will need to keep the area clean and sprayed for flies. I will come back in a few days and remove the drain. It should be a piece of cake. If he was a racehorse, I would be a little worried about whether that muscle under this abscess was damaged, but it shouldn’t be a problem. And if it was damaged, there isn’t anything we could do about it.”

So that was about that, I scrubbed up the area. I injected a little Lidocaine before making a sizable hole in the abscess. The pus that drained was really rank smelling, not typical at all. After flushing the wound with Hydrogen Peroxide and followed with Betadine, I sutured a Penrose drain in the opening. I gave a hefty dose of long-acting Penicillin and a tetanus booster. 

After spraying the whole area for flies, Joe was fine until the fly spray but settled right down when it was over. I tossed the can of fly spray to Bob. “Twice a day, the more, the better. I will be back on the third day and check things over and get the drain out. I would expect things to heal fine.”

That was close to the extent of my snake bite experiences in Sweet Home until one evening when a guy comes through the door right at closing time. He has his wife and 5 kids and a hound dog with him.

“We just moved into town a few minutes ago,” Jim says. “We moved from Susanville, California. This hound was snake bit a couple of days before we moved, I was hoping you could get a look at him. He is really swollen.”

So the bite was at least 3 days ago, this was probably going to be a replay of the bite wound on Joe.

Jim lifted Burno onto the exam table. Burno was a large Blue Tick hound. He had more black on him than many Blue Ticks but some black ticking on white on his legs and front shoulders. His exam showed an elevated temperature and a submandibular abscess.

“I was afraid the swelling was going the shut off his airway,” Jim said.

“It is pretty loose, shouldn’t be a problem just yet,” I said as I opened Burno’s mouth and used my finger to explore the back of his mouth and upper airways.

“How do you do that without getting bit?” Jim asked. 

“I keep my thumb on the roof of his mouth with quite a bit of pressure,” I said. “That keeps his mouth open, that and then you have to be quick. His airway is fine. This is just a large abscess at this point in time. I will drain it with local anesthesia, flush it, and place a drain for a few days. That and antibiotics should be all he needs.”

Burno’s treatment was identical to Joe’s except for the tetanus vaccine. Dogs are pretty resistant to tetanus and are not routinely vaccinated.

So now, having treated two cases of snake bites, both multiple days old, I could almost call myself a novice. I have talked to veterinarians in other areas about how they handled snake bites, and there is a wide variety of opinions. Antivenom is expensive, but many veterinary patients survive without it. 

Photo credit: Photo by Alexis Chateau from Pexels

Seventeen Bites

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

Mrs. Wilson was standing by the exam table holding her cat, Fluffy, in her arms. Fluffy was an average-sized female cat with long gray hair and striking blue eyes.

“What’s up with Fluffy this morning, Mrs. Wilson?” I asked.

“She has been sick for several days,” Mrs. Wilson said. “She hasn’t eaten a bit for at least two days, and this morning she started vomiting. I am sick with worry.”

“Let’s set her on the table, and I will get a look at her,” I said.

“Can you get a blanket for her,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Fluffy is used to soft surfaces, and that table looks cold and hard.”

Joleen retrieved a soft kennel mat and placed it on the table. Then she pried Fluffy from Mrs. Wilson’s arms. 

“She will be safer on the table if I hold her,” Joleen said as she directed Mrs. Wilson to a chair.

I petted Fluffy, and she did not respond to the attention. Opening her mouth, her oral membranes were dry, with some whitish mucus at the corners of her mouth. I picked up the skin on her back over her shoulder blades. It almost stood up on its own, slowly sliding back to a normal position.

Palpating Fluffy’s abdomen revealed a painful bladder. I squeezed the bladder slightly, and Fluffy cried a bit and deposited a few drops of bloody urine on the exam table. Mrs. Wilson was out of her chair and at the table to comfort Fluffy.

“We need to get some blood and urine out of Fluffy,” I said. “She obviously is very dehydrated. It might be wise to keep her overnight for some IV fluids and any other needed treatment.”

“I am not going to leave Fluffy overnight, Doctor Larsen,” Mrs. Wilson said.

“This could be a serious illness,” I said. “Treating her as an outpatient could be difficult and threaten her life.”

“If Fluffy is going to die, she is going to die at home,” Mrs. Wilson said. “I can leave her for a few hours while you do your blood work and treatments, but she is not going to be left here overnight.”

“Let me get a look at these couple of drops of urine real quick,” I said. “I just want to see if the kidneys are working.”

The urine had many red blood cells, white blood cells, and some crystals. The good thing was the concentration was very high, so we probably had functional kidneys.

“Okay, Mrs. Wilson, we can try to work within your limitations,” I said. “It looks like Fluffy is probably not in kidney failure. But she does have a serious urinary tract infection. We will do some blood work to make sure my initial assessment is accurate and get some urine for a urine culture. For her dehydration, we will give some fluids by subcutaneous injection. That is less than ideal but may be functional. It will leave a large squishy lump on her back, and her elbows will be baggy this evening. Then we can recheck her in the morning.”

We kept Fluffy and started by drawing blood and getting some urine from her bladder with a needle poke.

Her blood and urine showed a significant urinary tract infection, and we started a urine culture. 

In the cat, lower urinary tract disease is usually caused by diet-related issues and is seldom complicated by infection. Fluffy’s prognosis was pretty favorable with antibiotics, fluids, and a special diet.

Joleen had the treatment table set up to give Fluffy some subcutaneous fluids. We gave Fluffy an injection of amoxicillin in her kennel and then moved her to the treatment table for her fluids.

I commonly treated cats with fluids administered under their skin. It was a fast procedure and generally well tolerated by the cat. It was satisfactory in mild disease, but I would have preferred to have Fluffy on an IV due to the degree of dehydration. 

I stuck a sixteen gauge needle into the skin on her back, and Joleen started the fluids. I stood holding Fluffy by the nape of her neck, and Joleen was applying some pressure to the bag of fluids. We made some idle conversation as Joleen watched the fluids in the bag.

“How much do you want to give her?” Joleen asked.

Suddenly, Fluffy exploded!

Like is visualized in cartoons, Fluffy made circles around and around my arm, starting at my wrist, and in a brief second, she was at my shoulder. I managed to grab her and return her to the table.

“Are you okay?” Joleen asked.

“I think so,” I said. “I think she just scratched me.”

“I don’t think so,” Joleen said. “I think those are bite marks.”

We examined my right arm and my right side. Many bite wounds were evident on my arm and the side of my chest.

“I guess I better get a doctor to look at these,” I said. “The only animal that has ever put me in the hospital was a cat.”

I took a couple of cephalexin capsules and headed for the doctor’s office. They counted seventeen bites on my arm and my side.

“Do you think you should flush these wounds?” I asked the doctor. 

“I’ll have the nurse scrub these really well, and we will get you started on some Augmentin,” the doctor said. “That will be more effective than the cephalexin that you took. I think that should take care of things for you.”

I was cleaned up and returned to the office just in time to send Fluffy home.

“I hope Fluffy was okay for you, Doctor Larsen,” Mrs. Wilson said.

“Well, actually, she objected to the subQ fluids a bit,” I said. “In fact, she bit me seventeen times on my arm and the side of my chest.”

I held up my arm for her inspection.

“Oh my, Fluffy, did that mean man upset you?” Mrs. Wilson asked Fluffy as she reached into the kennel to console her.

“Well, we will be a little more cautious with Fluffy in the future,” I said. “We should recheck her in the morning. If things are improved, we will repeat the fluids and antibiotic injection and set you up with medication for home. And we will need to get her on a special diet for a time.”

“Whatever you say, Doctor,” Mrs. Wilson said. “We just want our little Fluffy to be well.”

“Well, if you remember, I wanted to keep her on an IV overnight,” I said. “This treatment is our second choice, and hopefully, it will work out okay.”

“Yes, I remember, but Fluffy will be much happier at home tonight,” Mrs. Wilson said.

***

Fluffy was much improved in the morning. We repeated the fluids, but this time we had Fluffy restrained in a cat bag. The urine culture showed an E. coli infection in the urinary bladder.

Fluffy went on the heal and returned to her old self. But she remained on my naughty list.

My wounds healed uneventfully.

Photo by Cocoparisienne/Pixabay