Butty and my Butt

We have this storage house in the backyard.  Ms. Donna calls it her dollhouse.  It looks just like the big house and has windows and an overhead door.  Kind of a baby big house.  There's a sidewalk going to it and the area it sits in has a wooden picket fence about four feet tall.  We store yard tools in it and Ms. Donna uses it as a staging area for her gardening.  She leaves the door open year ‘round because we usually keep dogs in that yard and she wants them to be able to get inside if the weather goes bad. 



Since the door is open it gets junk in it.  Junk like leaves and spiders and mice and raccoons, birds, etc.  So a couple of times a year or so I have to go in there and clean up. 



Butty was helping me.  I'd sweep the leaves into a pile and then pick them up and stuff them into a large plastic bag, which I would then dump in my vegetable garden when it got full.  I swept and scooped and Butty snorted and sniffed.  Three other dogs were out there with us but they were just wandering around the yard. 



Butty is a chow-mix.  He’s one of those dogs that just showed up and decided to stay.  We saw him in the neighborhood for a couple of weeks.  He’d be at the place down the road where a guy lives in a trailer.  He’d be at a house around the corner with the kids.  He’d come by our place a lot and just sit out front looking in at all the dogs.  Then one day Steve, the cowboy from next door asked me to do something about that dog.  Steve was afraid the dog would mess with his cows.  Steve has some pretty expensive cows.  So I brought Butty in and he’s been part of the family ever since.



I was scooping leaves and suddenly a reddish brown blur flashed past me.  It was a swirl of Butty and Butty bared teeth.  It flew into the leaves and and landed with both feet in front.  It shook and shook like some kind of movie demon.  Pieces of skin and bodily liquid flew around in the air while I stepped back gasping and wondering what little pieces of what were splipping on my face.  I realized that Butty had caught a snake.  The piece I saw looked like a bull snake.  Bull snakes are pretty snakes.  We have a lot of them hanging around.  I try not to kill them because they do police the area by eating bulls.  No.  Not bulls.  Good grief, what are you talking about.  No, they eat mice and rats and stuff like that.  They don’t eat squirrels.  Wish they did.



Then the other dogs came into the doll house.  They too wanted a piece of snake.  Me and all the dogs wandered around looking for pieces of snake and watching Butty have his fun.  Then I saw the head.  I reached for it.  It snapped and then opened up again.  Even when a critter is dead, it often will move because of nerves.  This dead snake head was biting because of nerves.  This diamond shaped snake head was biting because of nerves.  Oh, crap.  This FANGED diamond shaped snake head was biting because of nerves.  I grabbed what dogs I could and yelled at the rest to get everyone out of the doll house.  Then I carefully reached down and oh, so carefully picked up the copperhead head and carried it outside the fence line and buried it.



We find lots of copperheads around the house.  They look kinda like bull snakes.  We have a lot of leaves and copperheads love dead leaves.  We grow plants and water them a lot.  Copperheads like wet leaves. 



It’s interesting.  Steve the cowboy lives just next door, about a quarter mile away.  He gets a lot of rattlers.  He gets what we call Velvet Tails.  They’re timber rattlers.  We never see rattlers and he never sees copperheads.  Wonder why that is.



So anyway, I stopped working and went inside the house with the dogs.  Looked very closely at Butty and didn’t see where he had been bitten.  I texted Ms. Donna who was in Philadelphia.  Told her about the incident and told her he was O.K.  I drank some juice and watched Butty.  He was just fine.  After a while I got up to go back outside.  I looked down at Butty and saw a little bit of a lump on his cheek.  I looked more closely.  Opened his lips and noticed that he was bleeding from his gums and his gums were swelling. 



Crap.



I texted Ms. Donna and said I’m going to town with Butty.  It was late Saturday afternoon and the vet in Skiatook, only about 10 miles away, was closed.  As I got onto the highway I called the vet in Owasso, about 20 miles from Skiatook.  They said they were closing and they didn’t keep antivenin anyway.  So I headed for the Tulsa animal emergency center, about 40 minutes away.



Butty sat in the seat next to me and he had his mouth open as he sat there smiling.  He was drooling and dripping blood.  The farther we drove the more profusely he bled.  Only halfway to Tulsa the car seat was a real mess of drool and blood.  He was really swelling now in his neck and jaw and mouth.  I thought, crap, what do I do if he quits breathing.



Well we got there.

He kept tilting his head in a strange way.  The first intake person said that tilting his head like that could mean a problem.  With copperheads there’s a reaction in the body that can make you bleed out inside.  Strangely tilting the head is one symptom. 



So ok.  Sure, give him blood work.  I knew Ms. Donna would want that for sure even though it did cost $300.  I tell people that if they say our dog needs a heart transplant Ms. Donna will whip out the checkbook.  Do I want shots for pain?  Well, yea I guess so.  He must be in pain.  Probably another hundred.  Now do I want antihistamine?  Well I gave him two Benadryls at home.  Oh no, we need EXPENSIVE antihistamine.  Ok.  Another hundred.



So he’s O.K.

Some dogs – especially small ones – will bleed out.  Some dogs get sick.  Some dogs aren’t really bothered at all.

After they gave him a pain shot he quit the strange tilting of his head.  He must have been doing that because it hurt.  He swelled up rudely for a few days but that was all.  If that copperhead would have hit me I’d be in the hospital for days. 



Old Butty saved my butt.