After attending a call out to an unwanted customer at the Pambula Milk Bar last Friday, Sprocket the snake handler has confirmed he is in good health.
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Sprocket, aka Phillip Sproates, was bitten by a red-bellied black snake while trying to remove it from the shop.
“I could have avoided the situation if I didn’t take my mind off what I was doing,” he said.
“I was getting distracted by people crowding around and asking questions. It was just an unlucky moment.”
Despite being bitten, Sprocket still managed to contain the snake inside a bag before his trip to hospital where he spent the night.
The snake was released by another Potoroo Palace staff member into the Panboola Wetlands.
Sprocket said with a decent envenomation, red-belly snake bites can cause a loss of sense of smell or taste.
“Your taste and smell does come back after a while but then sometimes it wont. Everyone reacts differently.”
Sprocket was lucky with his bite on the middle finger, “what I got was a dry bite with what they call a residual envenomation,” he said.
The bite hasn’t put Sprocket off snake handling – he has already returned to work at Potoroo Palace with his python pals.
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