Australian man bitten by deadly snake grabbed a beer and hoped for the best

When Rod Sommerville thought he might die after an eastern brown snake bit him in his backyard in Yeppoon, Central Queensland last month he decided a final cold beer was in order.

The 54-year-old was moving a few pot plants in his yard when the two and half foot snake nipped him on the finger. Rod's reaction was to grab his shovel and "whack it on the head". As soon as he was done with the snake, he called an ambulance, grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat down.



"I said to myself, if I'm going to cark it I'm going to have a beer, so I got a Goldie out of the fridge and drank that; 'cause you know eastern browns are the second most venomous snake in the world," Rod said Rod's teenage son was on the couch and slept through the whole thing because Rod didn't want to wake him and make anyone panic. "If you panic it makes it worse," he said.

Rod was taken straight to the Yeppoon Hospital, but transferred a short while later to Rockhampton to get the anti-venom. But his ordeal wasn't over just yet, with Rod suffering an allergic reaction to the anti-venom. He ended up spending four days in intensive care. Rod still isn't out of hospital after three weeks. "The reaction nearly killed me as well, so it was a double whammy," he said. Rod's kidneys were affected and that's kept him in hospital recovering for weeks.