By Stella Bryson, Staff Writer

It was a warm fall day and Kitty Hawk Elementary School teacher Penny Adams was visiting her family’s farm in Bertie County. She was walking through the cornfields toward the family home when her dog, Paul, suddenly became very tense.

Adams stayed on the path, not knowing what lurked in the tall corn stalks all around her. Paul whined loudly, and Adams became concerned. Paul jumped in front of her in the path, covering her legs with his body, and all of a sudden, the Labrador-mix launched through the air, letting out the loudest yelp she had ever heard.

“It looked like Paul had been hit by a baseball bat,” Adams recalled.

It all happened so quickly that she barely had time to take it in.

With Paul lying on the ground crying, Adams knew she had to get him to a veterinarian hospital, but there were none nearby. She could see the bite marks on his ear and had a sinking feeling it might be a rattlesnake bite. Adams immediately began to worry about what to do next.

She wasn’t strong enough to carry Paul back to the car – he weighed 80 pounds – and she had no cell phone reception to call her family for help. Paul’s ear was starting to swell to the size of a pear and he was hanging his head to one side, whimpering and breathing shallowly. Adams could see black blood vessels in his graying ear.

Although she was still in shock from the whole incident, she half-carried and half-pushed Paul back to the car, where she finally got cell service. She called the nearest emergency veterinarian, Dr. Elliot Grossman, a former student of hers from Manteo Elementary, who agreed to meet her and help Paul.

“My heart had never beat so fast,” Adams said.

She drove 90 minutes to the Roanoke Island Animal Clinic in Manteo, trying to calm her dog down and stay on the road at the same time. By the time they arrived, Paul’s ear looked so bad the doctor said it might have to be removed.

“I was so scared, but I left Paul in his capable hands,” Adams said.

In the end, Paul got stitches, shots, was put on steroids and antibiotics, and given anti-venom. Miraculously, he survived, spending about a week at the clinic.

“He was not interested in eating and had no appetite for even his favorite foods,” Adams recalled.

Later on, she went to a specialist at the NC Cooperative Extension to figure out what kind of snake had bitten Paul. They concluded the snake was a timber rattlesnake over five and a half feet long.

If Paul had not blocked the snake, Adams would have taken the full brunt of the bite and suffered tremendously.

“Paul is getting stronger every day and is almost back to his normal self,” Adams said with a smile.

Sophomore Stella Bryson can be reached at 23brysonst69@daretolearn.org.