From my morning paper:

Students bit by a venomous snake in classroom

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By MAGGIE SOUZA, Cox East Texas

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Administrators at Big Sandy Independent School District are reviewing their policy on letting students bring wild animals to school after a scare this week with a venomous snake.

Two Big Sandy High School students remained in a Tyler hospital Tuesday after being bitten by a cottonmouth snake during a science class Monday afternoon.

"It's not uncommon for schools to have different animal species in science labs, but a venomous snake - we made a mistake in identification," Superintendent Scott Beene said. "If I'd have known, or the teacher would have known, it would not have been in the district."

The students are expected to be fine, but probably will remain in the hospital for a couple of days for observation, Beene said after visiting the students Tuesday.

"They were both doing well and were feeling pretty good," he said. "They both had smiles on their face and were feeling a lot better today than they did yesterday."

Beene would not identify the students or the hospital.

The snake was one of several wild animals that students had taken in to the high school biology lab this school year, Beene said. The teacher, believing it to be nonvenomous, kept it in a cage in the lab.

On Monday, the students were at the snake cage during a lesson, after being asked once by the teacher to leave that area, Beene said.

"When (the teacher) looked up, they had one of the snakes out of the cage," Beene said. "A second later she heard one of them say, 'It just bit me.' "

The students were taken to a hospital immediately, Beene said.

School officials on Tuesday morning took the snake to the Caldwell Zoo in Tyler, where staff identified it as a cottonmouth, also known as a water moccasin.

A bite from a cottonmouth can be fatal, and symptoms usually begin immediately, according to information from the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Symptoms include swelling, weakness, numbness and tingling, difficulty breathing, nausea and a weak pulse.

Wildlife biologist Charlie Muller with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said cottonmouths are common in the area and are usually found near water. They are an aggressive species.

People who don't have much experience with snakes could confuse a cottonmouth with a rat snake, Muller said. A way to tell the two apart is by looking at the snake's head: the head of a cottonmouth is triangle-shaped and is wider than the body width, while a rat snake's head is the same width as its body.

Beene said he's not aware of any previous incidents in which a wild animal brought to school posed a problem.

"In a biology class like that, seeing life cycles and different animals is a part of that," Beene said. "But we definitely wouldn't want it to be a threatening situation in any way, and a venomous snake on school grounds is not something I would want."