The snake brothers keep getting bitten by their deadly pets. Only zoos can save them

The first editions of the index were a tabbed notebook. “I still have some of the original versions of it,” Boyer says. “You would, laboriously, turn the pages by hand, and you’d find ‘See page 27,’ like one of those books you find the end of, and then you’d make a phone call, because the last section in the antivenom index was the home phone numbers for the zoo keepers.”

In 2006, Boyer and Steven Seifert, then a medical toxicologist at the University of Nebraska, partnered to publish the index online, where it remains today. Now, there are nearly 90 animal organizations that list their merchandise.

When Chris Gifford was bitten by a deadly green mamba, he was lucky to get antivenom from the Riverbanks Zoo in South Carolina.

Courtesy of Chris Gifford

Gifford, the North Carolina man, was relatively lucky, as only one of the mamba’s fangs pierced his skin. By the time he reached a nearby hospital, Gifford’s hand was swollen and creeping paralysis was causing his eyelids to droop. The antivenom indicator was activated, and the Riverbanks Zoo in South Carolina, about 200 miles to the southwest, got the antivenom it needed. Just 30 minutes after the mamba bite, Gifford was struggling to breathe as paralysis began to affect his diaphragm.

“It’s like you’re drowning,” he says.

Riverbanks Zoo keepers packed 10 vials of antivenom on ice and sent them on a helicopter. Once Gifford’s time reached the six-hour mark, the hospital began administering the first vials. “Almost immediately, I felt myself breathing,” Gifford says. He left the hospital about two days later.

If you are bitten With a venomous snake in the northeastern United States, chances are good you’ll be treated with vials of antivenom found in the refrigerator in the back room of the reptile house at the Bronx Zoo. The zoo partners with nearby Jacobi Medical Center, whose dedicated snakebite response team makes it a rarity among American hospitals.

Inside the refrigerator are boxes, boxes and bags of delicate glass vials that can often be the difference between life and death. The shelves are filled with jars filled with antivenoms for Indian and North American coral snake species, and lavender cardboard boxes labeled with pictures of poised king cobras. In all, the Bronx Zoo has 25 different types of antivenom, many of which are polyvalent, meaning they apply to multiple species.