WTF: Animal-loving CT man nearly killed trying to rescue very dangerous animal he spotted lying in the middle of the road

[Sugar Cookie]

An animal-loving dad was nearly killed when he tried to rescue what turned out to be a very dangerous animal from the middle of a busy road.

Joey Ricciardella, of Connecticut, was on his way back to his home in Torrington after dropping his four-year-old daughter off with her mother in New York on Sunday when he came across a snake lying in the middle of the road.

Ricciardella, who has a soft spot for animals, stopped his vehicle and grabbed a shirt from the backseat, placed it over the snake's head and picked it up to move it, WFSB reports.

But the animal in peril was a venomous Timber rattlesnake and when Ricciardella went to grab it, the lethal reptile bit his hand.

'It sounded like he was almost trying to make a funny voice, like at first I thought he was messing with me,' Brittany Hilmeyer, the mother of his four-year-old, said of her conversation with him afterwards.

She explained that she is used to Ricciardella being a jokester, but soon realized something was seriously wrong.

'He was getting to the point where he really couldn't talk. You couldn't understand him,' she said.

'It was like trying to talk to someone with a mouth full of marbles.'

Hilmeyer did not know at the time, but the venom from the snake bite was affecting his ability to breathe.

She added that she was not surprised when she later found out Ricciardella went out of his way to help the snake.

'He's had a bat in his house with a broken wing at one point that he was trying to fix,' she recounted.

'Last week, it was a baby bunny.'

Ricciardella somehow was able to make it back to his car and drove himself to the nearest hospital - where doctors determined that his respiratory system was failing and he went into cardiac arrest.

But due to a short supply of anti-venom at the Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington, he had to be moved to Hartford Hospital in the state capital.

'A lot of hospitals, I guess it's not common to carry large amounts of anti-venom,' Hilmeyer said.

There are only two venomous snakes that live in Connecticut: the Northern Copperhead and the Timber rattlesnake, whose bites could be fatal.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection recommends that anyone who encounters either species, observe it from a distance and back away slowly.

But Ricciardella was lucky, and is said to be doing well in the hospital after suffering from not only the venom, but also a life-threatening allergic reaction that caused him to be placed in a medically induced coma, according to an online fundraiser set up to pay for his medical bills.

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Connecticut man nearly dies after trying to save dangerous animal

Joey Ricciardella was on his way home from dropping his four-year-old daughter back with her mother in New York when he came across the dangerous animal lying in the middle of the road.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Bunnies yes, snakes and bats are a no no.

 

[slovakianrenner]

We have a lot of them here in West Virginia , mostly in the mountains , but they can be in lower areas too

 

[everjaded]

Really curious whether he knew it was a rattler before trying to save it.

 

[slovakianrenner]

Really curious whether he knew it was a rattler before trying to save it.

He had to have known , he would have heard that snake from a good distance

 

[the cat did it]

I think bats are rather cute in their own way, their little furry faces are cute to me. Some things are just so damn ugly they are cute, or is that just me?

 

[Sugar Cookie]

I think bats are rather cute in their own way, their little furry faces are cute to me. Some things are just so damn ugly they are cute, or is that just me?

Some bats are actually really beautiful it is that they carry so many diseases that make them a no no for me.

 

[Alxprkrkrls]

I think bats are rather cute in their own way, their little furry faces are cute to me. Some things are just so damn ugly they are cute, or is that just me?

I bought a bat house for my yard! I love them and they are amazing pest control! Unfortunately you can’t put the bat houses in trees because they will get eaten by other animals, so I would have to install a large post in my tree line. I did 0 research before buying it. Amazon just makes my whims too damn accessible!

 

[Symmachus]

He seems like a good man with a bleeding heart. He had no moral necessity to attempt helping that snake, but he chose to.

I'm very glad that he appears to be pulling through and recovering. I hope him and his family well.

 

[cubby]

I do hope he's learned a lesson, tho. Since I can't really tell the difference between snakes, I tend to treat them all the same: back the hell away and run in the opposite direction. I don't really want to kill them because I know they serve some sort of purpose so I just don't engage with them if I can go another way.

 

[everjaded]

I do hope he's learned a lesson, tho. Since I can't really tell the difference between snakes, I tend to treat them all the same: back the hell away and run in the opposite direction. I don't really want to kill them because I know they serve some sort of purpose so I just don't engage with them if I can go another way.

In the US it's fairly easy to tell if you have a danger noodle or not. I believe that coral snakes are the only venomous snakes around here that don't have a slit pupil. Coral snakes are easily identifiable by the coloration, so no problem there.

Everything else, if it has a round "sweet" looking eye, it's alright. If it's a slitted pupil, be careful. This does not at all apply outside of the US, so forget this rule if you ever leave the country lol

 

[cubby]

If I have to get close enough to see whether or not it's got a slit pupil or see the pit that's supposedly between those slit pupils, I'm way the hell too close.

The last snake I saw was a baby and it was whipping back and forth so fast that there is no way I could see all that, Mr. Cubby knew snakes and he was falling down laughing at me because I was screaming, it was a king snake.

 

[the cat did it]

I bought a bat house for my yard! I love them and they are amazing pest control! Unfortunately you can’t put the bat houses in trees because they will get eaten by other animals, so I would have to install a large post in my tree line. I did 0 research before buying it. Amazon just makes my whims too damn accessible!

OMG I had no idea about this-now I want a bat house-I have soo many mosquitoes in my yard and not enough dragon flies to eat them! Off to Amazon..Thanks!

 

[Metalfan]

Fn gross, I've pulled out many of those slithery nasties cleaning pools.