Hospital reports high number of snakebites

A Utah hospital reports treating six cases of snakebite so far this year, far more than the average one or two a year.

Staffers at Logan Regional Hospital say an unusual number of rattlesnakes have been reported in residential districts in the area in Cache County on Utah's border with Idaho, The Herald Journal of Logan reported.

Two of the bites occurred in the past week.

"This is highly uncommon as far as the number that we've seen," Debbie Ostrander, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said Monday. "And our emergency department physicians and our hospital, we are urging people to be safe and cautious and just aware when they're out in any location that could have the habitat for snakes."

Breck Rushton, director of emergency services at the hospital, said two of the six bite victims were trying to capture snakes. The others were bitten when they surprised a snake while walking in brush or traversing rocky areas.

Two of the six were "dry bites" with the snake breaking the skin but not injecting venom. That is in line with the usual percentage.

Treating snakebite is expensive, with victims requiring four to five vials of anti-venin at $2,000 a pop, followed by a 48-hour hospital stay for observation.

'Rock rabbits' becoming a pest in Israel

Hyraxes, sometimes knows as rock rabbits, are fuzzy, cute and, in Israel at least, becoming a serious pest in residential areas, scientists say.

The animals have moved into neighborhoods of Galilee and have been destroying people's gardens.

"They're coming into the villages and eating everything they can find," University of Haifa researcher Arik Kershenbaum told the BBC.

Scientists say they think they know why: hyraxes love to make their homes in the debris from building sites, where they can lounge in the sun and still stay close to their bolt holes.

"It turns out that it's the piles of boulders [created by clearing sites for building] that attract the hyraxes," Kershenbaum said.

"We confirmed that they're attracted to the boulder piles rather than heading specifically for people's gardens," he said.

Suburban wildlife-watchers are fond of the hyraxes but some people have called for a cull.

Nothing that drastic is needed, researchers say; simply filling in the boulder piles would drive hyraxes out of the villages and back to their usual homes in the surrounding cliffs.

That would be a solution in line with the Bible, which mentions the creatures.

Proverbs 30:26 of the King James Bible says, "The rock badgers are a feeble folk, yet they make their homes in the crags."