Snake Bros Keep Getting Bitten by Their Lethal Pets. Only Zoos Can Save Them

The first thing Chris Gifford thought as he felt a fang sink into his skin was: I’m going to die. The second: I need to start a timer immediately.

That day in 2021, Gifford was cleaning the enclosures of the several dozen snakes he kept at his parents’ home in Raleigh, North Carolina. Nearly every snake in his possession was both venomous and native to distant corners of the world. Sharp-nosed vipers, eyelash vipers, forest cobras—every one of them beautiful, and many of them lethal.

So too was the 7-foot-long, electric-hued western green mamba that had just latched onto its enclosure’s swing door as Gifford attempted to pull it out with a hook. The snake then lunged off and bit into Gifford’s hand, unleashing a deadly neurotoxic venom into his body.

“I dropped the snake,” Gifford says. “I dropped the hook. I’m like, ‘Oh man, I’m probably dead.’ This is a very toxic, fast-acting venomous snake.”

Chris Gifford amassed an audience on social media for videos of him handling his exotic pet snakes, many of which are lethal. Courtesy of Chris Gifford

As Gifford, then 21, hurried to re-hook the mamba and secure it, he felt his hand begin to tingle ominously. Gifford didn’t know precisely how long he had, but was certain that without help he would be dead in hours. His life would depend on a vital resource: antivenom, which was tucked securely away at the unlikeliest of places—a zoo and botanical garden hundreds of miles away.

That’s where the Antivenom Index, a little-known directory that for half a century has connected Americans bitten by venomous exotic pets with the zoos that can save them, comes in. Generally speaking, the best way to treat the most life-threatening snakebites is with antivenom made using venom of the same species. The process begins with extracting venom, often by milking drops of toxin from the fangs of a snake. The venom is then injected into an animal, like a horse or a sheep, to spur the development of antibodies. It's finally transformed into a substance that can halt the original venom’s effects in humans.