Crouching on a creekbank, Jeremy Sons recoiled as the largest cottonmouth he’d ever seen attached itself to his body and delivered a cascade of venom via half-inch, hinged, hypodermic fangs.
The snake bit three times in less than a second. No dry bites; no half measures. Approximately 5 ounces of venom, the full motherlode, surged into Sons’ finger.
By reflex, he ripped the snake from his hand, flung it in the water, and began a race against the poison’s bullrush from tissue to lymphatic system to bloodstream.
Over 8,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes each year in the United States, typically resulting in six to seven deaths. Sons, with hemotoxins and cytotoxins flooding his body, booked a spot on the fatality list. Despite remarkable fitness and a life spent in the outdoors, his survival demanded a bucket of antivenom. An astounding 54 vials.
“What do you do when a snakebite overwhelms the antivenom and you lose count on how many doses you’ve taken?” Sons asks. “Not gonna lie. I was scared.”
The Motherlode
Welcome to a piece of heaven and an island of misfits. Roughly 45 minutes north of Dallas, up I-35, outside Sanger, in Denton County, Texas, sits Clear Creek Adventure Ranch. On wooded hills rimmed by plentiful pastures, expect to find Sons, 46, alongside his wife, Katelyn, giving roughly 70 animals a new lease on life: blind calves, three-legged goats, and a host of other creatures once deemed hopeless.
“We provide a forever home,” Sons describes. “When we take an animal, it’s a lifetime commitment and responsibility. A good portion of them are special needs with some sort of disability. At first, most people would classify them as helpless, but we give all the love and medical care needed for rehab and a permanent, safe home. It’s the greatest privilege to take care of God’s creation.”
Sons, in league with his animals, fits no mold. Ain’t a box to hold him. Built like a UFC cage fighter, sporting a Duck Dynasty beard, and frequently working his ground in shorts and bare feet, Sons is a Texas Tarzan. Muscles hard as hickory, but the softest heart for the broken. “My grandfather was into taxidermy. My daddy was a big hunter of deer and hogs. Me, I’ve always loved animals, especially those in need of a special touch.”
The Clear Creek Adventure Ranch property was purchased in 1919, by Sons’ grandfather, John George, who arrived in Texas by covered wagon. Sons spent his entire youth on the land, climbing trees and chasing wildlife. “While all my friends were in town, riding skateboards, I was out here running free. Sometimes, as a boy, I felt like I was missing out. Instead, now I know they missed out on all my wonderful days on the creek.”
Clear Creek splits Sons’ land. Knee-deep and 30’ wide, with sandy banks, the water runs in a cut, dropping off 20’ banks in some spots.
More so than other spot on the ranch, Sons was raised in and along the water. “Even as a little boy, I stayed out all day long, going up and down the creek. I can still remember my mom’s head-turner of a whistle. She’d let it out—loud as a train—back at the house, and I’d hear it and head back. That creek is home to some of my most special memories.”
It’s also home to a motherlode of water moccasins.
Reality Bites
Despite Texas’ deserved reputation as a rattlesnake haven, Sons’ acreage has almost no rattlesnake presence. And nearly no copperheads. However, he has cottonmouths aplenty. “Cottonmouths are just a part of life on the ranch. If I wanted to avoid snakes, especially cottonmouths, I’d have to stay in bed.”
In heavy foreshadowing, Sons’ father, Mark, was bitten on Clear Creek at 16 years old while coon hunting in the 1970s. Crawling up the bank in darkness, Mark placed his hand atop a cottonmouth and got tagged, requiring a multi-day stay in ICU and several vials of anti-venom.
However, the incident was child’s play compared to what would befall his son almost 50 years later.
On the evening of July 25, 2026, with farm work and chores completed, Sons and Katelyn walked to Clear Creek. With temps still hovering above 90-plus degrees, the time on the clock read “Snake:30,” the half-hour before dark when cottonmouths get active.
“Sometimes of an evening, we go down to the creek to see what we see. On this evening, we were just taking a leisurely look to see what was going on. Maybe just wander the creek for a while and enjoy being together.”
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. In shorts and tennis shoes, while checking the bank for washed up hand-me-downs, Sons made a massive mistake: He got too comfortable.
Slipping his hand beneath a log, Sons felt his hand vibrate with a severe stinging sensation. Pulling back, Sons retracted his arm—along with a near 4’ cottonmouth.
The mainstay viper of the southeastern United States, often dubbed a water moccasin or swamp lion, a cottonmouth is known to frequently hold its ground when disturbed, head up and mouth agape. Typically, the snake is black-gray in color (although coloration fades creamier in the Deep South) with a mottled belly and thick, muscular midsection, blunt tale, and length ranging up to 5’, but often reaching 6’ and slightly beyond. In short, the snake is a semiaquatic hoss, and merited or not, usually elicits the fear of God, or at a bare minimum, a primal stream of invective.
“This dude was dark and fat, with girth as thick as a baseball bat. About as long I’ve ever seen around here. In fact, I’d say he’s the biggest cottonmouth I’ve ever seen. He was an easy 3.5’, but coulda been pushing 4’.”
In milliseconds, hinged fangs descended from a sheathed membrane and the cottonmouth struck three times. Before Sons could react, he had five puncture wounds in his right index finger.
“It happened in a blur. I reacted on instinct. He’d locked up on me and it never occurred to me that he was venomous until I saw fangs. I grabbed behind his head, dropped him in the water, and started checking my finger. It still hadn’t dawned on me what happened.”
“I’ve been bit by hundreds, if not thousands of watersnakes. They’ll leave behind blood from sandpaper-like abrasions from their teeth. Staring at my finger, this blood was different. No doubt, I was looking at puncture marks. On top of all that, there was no unusual pain in those first moments. I didn’t even know he bit me three times. It happened so quick that it felt like one continuous burn.”
As Sons pulled out of the initial frozen moment and into fluid action, he turned toward Katelyn, who stood roughly 15’ distant. Without words, his pained grimace, his face said it all. Katelyn knew. She immediately knew.
Pointing toward the house, roughly a half-mile distant, Sons began walking. “Let’s go.”
Hand already swelling, Sons knew the drill: measured, steady steps to keep his heart rate down. But what he didn’t know? The ‘ole cottonmouth had absolutely smoked him with every last drop of venom in its glands.
Reality bites.
Off the Charts
Emergency lights flashing atop an F-150, Katelyn burned highway to Denton and Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital—a 25-minute ride. She’d already called ahead and made certain that antivenom was in supply.
From creek to house, Sons’ pain level was moderate. Seated in the passenger seat of the F-150, his pain level rocketed to total agony.
“In the truck, it was like the insides of my body started to scream out in burning pain. It was excruciating. I can handle a high, high level of pain, but this was something different. This was bone-crushing pain. Never felt anything like it. I had indescribable pain, but at the same time, I felt like I was fading away.”
His hand ballooned. Elbow cocked upward, Sons tightened a makeshift tourniquet. Bad mistake. “No way. The pain burned even hotter and I took off the wrapping. Turns out, it’s better to let it go, because if you cut off the circulation, you can end up losing that part of your body.”
What was happening inside Sons’ body? Litteratura Serpentium offers a sobering description: Cottonmouth venom literally dissolves the tissue that it contacts. Small blood vessels are disrupted so that the blood leaks out. As the zone of vascular damage increases in size, the animal bleeds to death in its own tissues. The heart fails, not because of direct injury, but because it can no longer pump effectively through the riddled vascular bed.
Twenty minutes after leaving home, Sons staggered into the emergency room, with staff ready and waiting. “I walked in those doors and hit my knees, and started throwing up. I threw up, up, and up. The nurses came running over and put me in a wheelchair with a barf bag. I bet I threw up for 10 minutes straight.”
Sons’ blood pressure was blitzing at 220/110, with pulse rate roaring at 200 beats per minute.
“Cottonmouth bites aren’t typically fatal, but I’d be lying if I say I wasn’t starting to get a little bit scared. They gave me morphine to cut the pain and then came the antivenom.”
Within 15 minutes of treatment, Sons estimates, he was given an intravenous dose of antivenom. “They started checking my coagulation numbers right after that. Long story short, mine wasn’t coagulating. They hit me again with antivenom. Eight bottles later, no coagulation.”
Approximately 7,500 people are bitten by venomous snakes every year in the U.S. Only 5 to 10 of those bites are fatal. However, Sons’ snakebite was off the statistical charts.
How much cottonmouth venom was injected into Sons? An average cottonmouth has a venom volume of .32 to 2.5 ml, or a dried weight of 125 mg. However, the largest specimens can hold around 4 ml, almost a teaspoon of liquid, with a dried weight of 1,094 milligrams.
If Sons received near 1,094 mg of venom, then he absorbed 7 to 11 times the estimated lethal dose of 100-150 mg.
Bottom line, Sons needed to guzzle beaucoup anti-venom, but the hospital’s cupboard was bare. Time for transport and surgery.
“It’d be fair to say my anxiety leaped. What was at first an extremely serious situation went nuclear.”
Filleted Flesh
Hello, Fort Worth. “That’s only 45 minutes away from Denton, but by the time I arrived with no treatment, my bloodwork had gone through the roof again.”
More anti-venom doses: 10, 20, 30, and counting.
“By this time, as the poison progressed, they were marking all over my body to trace the swelling and discoloration. They kept marking further away. My arm tripled in size all the way up into my shoulder, and then it went down my armpit all the way down my rib cage and then started swelling around my hips. There was so much swelling you grab hunks of flesh. Then all that area turned black and purple, down into my lower legs.”
Sons’ pulse only reached above his elbow, indicating lack of circulation. “They had to do something or I’d lose a limb. Basically, they filleted me. They sliced around my hand in seven different spots with deep cuts to encourage blood flow. Long story short, the surgery kept my hand from blowing up by giving the skin room to adjust.”
Meanwhile, antivenom continued. Finally, after 54 treatments, Sons turned the corner.
As he lay in hospital, Sons chronicled his stay via social media and TikTok. His posts exploded. Tens of millions of views.
“I figured to put it on the internet and raise snake awareness and maybe help somebody out to avoid what happened to me. Instead, it went viral and people across the country, and even across the world, were supportive. To this day, I haven’t been able to respond to even 1% of the kind comments rooting for me.”
After three days in ICU and a seven-day total stay in a hospital bed, Sons went home, finger and hand intact.
Driving up to Clear Creek Adventure Ranch, Sons snapped back into action.
“I mean, we were not even out of the vehicle and had an emergency. We loaded up and away we went to the emergency vet with one of our animals. The show goes on, snakebitten or not. I was probably never, never so happy to get back into taking care of our animals.”
Hit the Lottery
The cottonmouth left permanent nerve damage. “So what?” Sons exclaims. “Who knows what kind of pain or limited use I’ll have for the rest of my life, but I don’t care, because I’m blessed beyond belief.”
Ironically, Sons carries the same attitude of his animal misfits: No time for self-pity.
“The Good Lord creates us all with purpose and design. Despite having one eye, or three legs, or being mistreated, our animals carry on with life every day and do their best. They don’t throw pity parties. They take advantage of the opportunities afforded them by God. No complaints or wallowing. No comparing their life with another.”
“That inspires me so deeply. That makes me grateful for everything I’m given on a daily basis.
That encourages me to never waste a single day. No matter how tough something is that you’re going through, you can’t forget: There’s people out there that would think they hit the lottery if they woke up with your pain, or your bills, or your family troubles.”
And what happened to the culprit cottonmouth on Clear Creek?
“People have asked if I’m gonna go on a killing spree. No,” Sons concludes. “That snake did nothing wrong. He didn’t slither into my house and crawl in my bed. I went into his home.”
For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer
Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust
Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing
When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case
