United States | Snakes on a list

When treating snakebites, American hospitals turn to zoos 

The zookeeper will see you now

Portrait of a puff adder.
Ticket to BrooklynPhotograph: Alamy
|BRONX ZOO

AT SPACE FARMS, a family-owned zoo and museum in rural New Jersey, Parker Space keeps African puff adders, cobras, copperheads, rat snakes, pythons, boa constrictors, “a bunch” of cottonmouth moccasins and eastern massasauga rattlesnakes. “I’ve been slinging a rattlesnake since I was 12,” says Mr Space, who is also a Republican state senator. On December 30th, aged 56, he sustained his first bite. His local hospital injected 14 vials of antivenom, but his bitten hand remained stubbornly swollen. So he was flown to the Bronx, where snake-bite specialists and exotic-snake antivenoms abound.

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Snakes on a list”

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