A Pinckney woman is recovering after she was bitten by a rattlesnake while walking in her yard.
Laura Bowen says she was cleaning out her garage, carrying some rakes down a walkway between her home and garage. That's when she says she didn't see the rattlesnake on the ground in front of a garage door, but almost immediately felt a burning pain in her leg when it bit her.
"It was like a bee sting times 10," Bowen said of the bite. "It was instant fry."
Bowen is slowly recovering from the incident, which happened noon on Aug. 20.
"Just kept telling myself don’t over react because it’s just probably a garden snake or something," she said. "I took a couple shutter steps and looked back and it was a huge snake."
The bite happened so fast, and the excruciating pain was almost instant.
"It was like acid, burn, pain," Bowen said.
She says she took a picture of the snake after the bite. Emergency responders immediately recognized it as an Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake.
"That was the best thing that I did was to take that photo so they could identify it and know what they were treating," she said.
Bowen spent four days in the hospital and received 10 vials of anti-venom. She still plays that day in her head over and over again, and is thankful everything is going to be ok.
"I think I’m going to buy some garden boots, the rubber ones that are clunky," Bowen said. "Definitely re-thinking my garden attire."
She's currently using a cane to help her get around, and should be able to walk on her own again within a week.
Bowen has two more doctors appointments just to make sure everything is healing well.
