Two snakes, two bites, lots of antivenin

Two men from Land O' Lakes are in the hospital recovering from snake bites.

The men don't live anywhere near each other, but their stories are quite similar.

Robert Troidl and Zachary Booth live about 20 minutes away from each other in Land O' Lakes, but now they find themselves a couple doors down from each other at the intensive care unit at University Community Hospital.

"They were rolling the anti-venin for him, and I was like, 'is that for somebody else or is it for me?'" said Troidl. "And the E.R. doctor says, 'no we have another guy who just came in that needs anti venin he's been bit too.' I was like wow."

Both Troidl and Booth were bitten by snakes at their homes -- both bitten by a pygmy rattle snake.

Booth says the one that bit him was about seven inches long.

"Just hanging out in my garage. I didn't even think it was dangerous. So I was just trying to shoo it out, not really hurt it with my shoe, and all of a sudden it just bit me out of nowhere," Booth said.

Troidl says he was on a golf cart picking up garbage in his yard.

"I thought something dropped from the golf cart. I turn around and I look and it's a rattle snake. A pygmy rattler," he said.

Troidl says the snake he encountered was a grand daddy about a foot and a half long. He killed it with a shovel. Troidl says he didn't even know he'd been bitten right through his sneaker.

"Twenty minutes later I go in the house and right away I start feeling the tingling and the burning sensation in my foot," he said.

Jim Maister, a snake bite expert at UCH, says this is the 14th and 15th snake bite cases they've had at the hospital this year. He says both men got 12 viles of anti venin, and timing saved both men.

"Quickly we were able to stop and reverse any of the hemo toxic effects," Maister said.

Both men are recovering and say they are feeling better. Troidl says it's expected you'll run into all kinds of snakes when you live near the woods.

"It's all part of nature... It's the way life is," he said.

Booth says he'll handle things differently now when it comes to snakes.

"I just won't go near them," he said.