Animal Bites - Any Experiences?

nzaugg

nzaugg

Escalante-Class Member
We just got back from one of our more eventful trips to the lake. Once I can decompress for a bit, I will write some more. I have an issue that I was hoping for some help with in the meantime. One of the nights we had a kid sleeping on top of the boat get bit by an animal. Both of her feet had bite marks (see below). The clinic at Bullfrog indicated it could be mouse, scorpion, or spider, but discounted the possibility of bat. We know that there are obviously many bats around. Additionally, we found a desert woodrat that had stowed aboard (also pictured below). Does anyone have experience with a biting animal at Lake Powell that would make marks like those in the pictures?

Thanks in advance!

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Looks like a spider bite to me. I get bit by spiders at home, and that’s what it looks like. Mice and other rodents tend to run away from people, and if they do run over you, it’s on their way to find something to eat or somewhere to hide if rousted out of their spot. People aren’t really their targets.

Scorpions might bite if surprised, but sleeping kids on a roof don’t present “surprise”. A spider might do it though.
 
JFRCalifornia said:
Looks like a spider bite to me. I get bit by spiders at home, and that’s what it looks like. Mice and other rodents tend to run away from people, and if they do run over you, it’s on their way to find something to eat or somewhere to hide if rousted out of their spot. People aren’t really their targets.

Scorpions might bite if surprised, but sleeping kids on a roof don’t present “surprise”. A spider might do it though.
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Thanks! It bled a lot and we are still anxious about it.
 
My wife once awoke to a mouse biting her finger up on the top deck. It didn’t break the skin and there wasn’t much of a mark. I think it was attracted to her hot pink nail polish. After she woke up half of Padre Bay at 2 am with the screaming, I started to look around the boat. The water was coming up 18 inches at the time and we had made the mistake of being parked near a tamarisk. The houseboat had settled into this bush and mice were coming up and down that bush like a freeway. The boat was crawling with mice. Especially since every rodent in the vicinity was marooned on this one tiny rubble pile by the rapidly rising water.

Needless to say she didn’t sleep very well that trip. I got a bunch of these guys that night including this double. Catfish came through and munched all the mice that I dumped overboard.
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An accidentally isolated animal on your boat may bite out of desperation looking for moisture. i have no experience with Lake Powell or the various creatures out there but an arid and hot climate like that and boating around might present a temporary habitat that some animal might use and then find out it really wasn't a wise choice.

I hope there are no complications. Bleeding a lot might have been a good thing. Since they did not wake up from the pain of a sudden bite my intuition says this was a spider bite or some other more stealthy creature - or they were sleeping like a rock, but i can't imagine sleeping through a bite like that if it were quick.
 
flowerbug said:
An accidentally isolated animal on your boat may bite out of desperation looking for moisture. i have no experience with Lake Powell or the various creatures out there but an arid and hot climate like that and boating around might present a temporary habitat that some animal might use and then find out it really wasn't a wise choice.

I hope there are no complications. Bleeding a lot might have been a good thing. Since they did not wake up from the pain of a sudden bite my intuition says this was a spider bite or some other more stealthy creature - or they were sleeping like a rock, but i can't imagine sleeping through a bite like that if it were quick.
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She did wake up. She shook her foot to get whatever was biting her off and tried to go back to sleep before noticing the blood. She didn’t scream though so I don’t know how painful it really was. There have been no signs of infection and the medic wasn’t concerned about rabies so I think we will count ourselves fortunate, but I don’t think we will get that one to sleep outside ever again.
 
We've seen spiders in webs being blown about many times at the lake, so one literally could have 'dropped in'.

Good it bled, and hopefully the memory will fade and she'll focus on the good stuff.

My 8 year old was bit & I had to tell her it was only because she was so sweet and tasted good to the spider.

She laughed through her tears....and got me to take her for ice cream....(again)

:cool:
 
I live in Southern California. I used to put out food and water for the quail that came down out of the surrounding hills.
Sometimes I'd have 20 or 30 quail in our oak forest.

I kept a rock in a pie tin that they drank from, so they wouldn't knock it over. I grabbed the rock to change the water, and I got stuck. "Cactus spine" I thought, but as I pulled my hand back, I found a scorpion dangling from my finger by his stinger! I shook him off, and my mind raced. I'd never been stung by a scorpion before.

I tried to find a canning jar, but I settled for an empty water bottle and a pair of needle nose pliers. The scorpion was still in the same spot, so I stuffed him in the bottle and called the poison control hotline. If I was going to react, at least I had the guy that stung me so the docs could identify him and treat me with the correct antivenom.

The hotline operator listened to me, and the first question was "Have you been to the Sonoran Desert in the last few months?" I said "No, it's been 6 months since my last trip to Lake Powell". "No problem then. Treat it like a bee sting".

I've avoided getting stung by the bark scorpions at the lake, but I've gotten pretty good at spotting their holes, and we carry black light flashlights now when we're on the beach after dark. I guess my SoCal scorpions are sissies compared to Lake Powell scorpions.
 
Ed_on_WD said:
I live in Southern California. I used to put out food and water for the quail that came down out of the surrounding hills.
Sometimes I'd have 20 or 30 quail in our oak forest.

I kept a rock in a pie tin that they drank from, so they wouldn't knock it over. I grabbed the rock to change the water, and I got stuck. "Cactus spine" I thought, but as I pulled my hand back, I found a scorpion dangling from my finger by his stinger! I shook him off, and my mind raced. I'd never been stung by a scorpion before.

I tried to find a canning jar, but I settled for an empty water bottle and a pair of needle nose pliers. The scorpion was still in the same spot, so I stuffed him in the bottle and called the poison control hotline. If I was going to react, at least I had the guy that stung me so the docs could identify him and treat me with the correct antivenom.

The hotline operator listened to me, and the first question was "Have you been to the Sonoran Desert in the last few months?" I said "No, it's been 6 months since my last trip to Lake Powell". "No problem then. Treat it like a bee sting".

I've avoided getting stung by the bark scorpions at the lake, but I've gotten pretty good at spotting their holes, and we carry black light flashlights now when we're on the beach after dark. I guess my SoCal scorpions are sissies compared to Lake Powell scorpions.
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I’ve never encountered a scorpion at Lake Powell, but I’m always a little surprised how often I find scorpions here in CA—specifically in my house, and I don’t even live in the desert! This guy I found under the kitchen sink last week… Maybe an inch long…

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On one trip to Stanton our large-ish group got stung a total of 7 times all combined. We started calling it Scorpion City.

Certainly no worse than a bee sting.

That would have been 20 years ago
 
i was fast asleep across the back of my little v-175 tracker about midnight in may. i heard a splashing and then a sudden set of wet webbed feet on the side of my face. quite the surprise in the middle of a dead sleep. i swiped it off about the time it landed good. think it scared both of us. was a male malard. i figure someone had been feeding it and it was just hungry.
 
this is not a scorpion bit. I ve been bit with a Scorpion at Lake Powell and it did not look like this
Also the kids will have cried all night
 
nzaugg said:
We just got back from one of our more eventful trips to the lake. Once I can decompress for a bit, I will write some more. I have an issue that I was hoping for some help with in the meantime. One of the nights we had a kid sleeping on top of the boat get bit by an animal. Both of her feet had bite marks (see below). The clinic at Bullfrog indicated it could be mouse, scorpion, or spider, but discounted the possibility of bat. We know that there are obviously many bats around. Additionally, we found a desert woodrat that had stowed aboard (also pictured below). Does anyone have experience with a biting animal at Lake Powell that would make marks like those in the pictures?

Thanks in advance!

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I'm going to go with MOUSE on that bite. Spider bites are just small, red dots. Those are teeth marks. I, too, have experience with this situation. Last year I was sleeping in the lower room of the Trash Tracker houseboat, and something bit the tip of one of my toes. I screamed of course, and got up and turned on the light. I thought I maybe twitched and jammed my toes into the carpeted side where some staples may have been sticking out. Nope. No staples. It was a mouse bite and it was bleeding. So I grabbed an alcohol wipe from the first aid kit.

Stupid rodents....

Tiff
 
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