Woman, 87, crushes venomous snake with bare hands

One fatality was reported on 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 Orring 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 Orring 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.

Orring 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.

Orring 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.''

With video.