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Woman, 87, bitten by pygmy rattler, kills snake

Tribune photo by JIM REED

This woman, 87, killed the rattlesnake that bit her.

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By JOSH POLTILOVE | The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 10, 2009

Updated: 08/10/2009 05:07 pm

TAMPA - One fatality was reported Monday when a pygmy rattlesnake bit an 87-year-old woman on the hand.

The final score: Cane-wielding octogenarian, 1: venomous snake, 0.

Esther Orreno spent most of Monday in the hospital but is expected to make a full recovery. The snake, however, is very much dead after Orring killed it with her bare hands.

"She's a very strong person,'' daughter Maria Pellicone said of her mother.

The snake bit Orreno this morning after she saw it on the doorstep of her home at Hunters Green. Not realizing what it was, she first pushed it around with her cane, but when she bent over to move it aside, the tiny snake bit her on the middle finger of her right hand.

Orreno then killed the snake with her hands, Pellicone said, and went inside to try treating herself. She pricked herself with a pin to try to draw out blood and venom, then swabbed herself with alcohol. Then she called Pellicone at work _ Orring doesn't speak English _ and her daughter called an ambulance.

Pellicone said her mother is familiar with snakes, having seen _ and killed _ them often growing up in Italy.

"In the farm back home in Italy, we have lots of snakes,'' Pellicone said. "So she kills the snake because in a farm we would eat on the floor because we had no table …. so you had to sit on the floor to eat. So the snakes that come around she would kill with the rocks.''

Orreno was taken to University Community Hospital, where she was given antivenin.

Pellicone says says she hopes her mother doesn't spend as much time outdoors, even if she is set in her ways. The trip to the hospital was somewhat traumatizing for her mother, she said, not so much because of the snake but because her mother "don't like to take her clothes off.''

CORRECTION: The name of an 87-year-old woman bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake Monday was misspelled on TBO.com and in Tuesday's Tribune article. Her name is Esther Orreno.

Reporter Josh Poltilove can be reached at (813) 259-7691.

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