Bitten by a Snake

My fear since moving into the new house has been that we’d see a snake on the porch or that worse, Admiral would get bitten.  I really mostly feared it when we let him swim in the pond out front.  
We brought Cason home from the hospital on a Monday afternoon.  On Tuesday night, I was feeding him around 9:00pm and Ryan came in the room and said “something’s wrong with Admiral”.  Ryan looked really upset and that of course freaked me out.  Admirals snout was huge and you could see two small punctures so we knew it had to be a snake.  He was drooling really bad (worse than normal) and you could tell he was in pain.  I called the emergency vet and they told us to call a different one as they had a 2+ hour wait.  Ryan and my dad loaded him into the car and off they went. 
While they were gone, I of course was “Googling” snakebites to see what to expect.  Most of the websites made me feel better but confirmed that Admiral was likely in a lot of pain.
The vet gave him several different medicines and sent him home with anti-biotics.  He said it was the 4th snake bite that night and that he was fairly sure it was a copperhead.  He also said that April is bad for copperheads… we assume this is mating season or something?  Who knows. 
Here are pictures I took trying to show the swelling (these were when he got home from the vet).

And this one is two days later.

He was pretty groggy and whiney for a couple of days.  Add that to having the new baby at home and he was a sad sight to see.  But, he’s back to his normal self, hopping up every time he hears paper/plastic rustling.  It was a scary night for the new mom and dad… not exactly what we wanted to be dealing with a day two home with baby.  It sure makes you realize how much a part of the family our four legged friends are when they are sick. 
We all survived the ordeal and Admiral is definitely warming up to his baby brother.