Episode 952 of the Tom Rowland Podcast is my conversation with David Orin, the 25-year-old snake specialist known as @adventorin to his 1.5 million Instagram followers. On December 18, while searching for scarlet kingsnakes on the Florida coast, David was bitten on the leg by a four-foot Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake he never saw. He spent thirteen nights in the ICU, went into anaphylactic shock, and tied a hospital record for antivenom. This is his full story, one month later.
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On December 18, David Orin was bitten on the leg by a four-foot Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake while searching for scarlet kingsnakes along the Florida coast. He never saw the snake before it struck — he said it felt like a steel bear trap or an alligator clamping onto his leg. He spent thirteen nights in the ICU and sixteen days total in the hospital before being discharged.
David Orin received so much CroFab antivenom that he tied the record for the most antivenom ever administered at Shands Hospital. The first hospital tried to start him at six vials before he and his family pushed for ten, and bureaucratic delays meant he waited roughly three hours for his second dose of ten vials and close to nine hours for his third.
Yes. Within minutes of the bite, Orin felt his face go numb and his throat begin to close — an anaphylactic reaction he had no history of. He was roughly thirty minutes from the nearest fire station and did not have an EpiPen. Paramedics on his life-flight helicopter administered epinephrine, and he felt his breathing improve about thirty seconds later.
Orin believes the diamondback sank its fangs directly into the muscle on the front of his lower leg, and the venom — which evolved to immobilize prey like rabbits — destroyed muscle, tendon, and nerve tissue in that area. The result is drop foot, where he cannot lift his foot upward when walking. Some doctors attributed it to his decision to decline a fasciotomy, a surgery that current peer-reviewed snakebite literature says is contraindicated.
David Orin is a 25-year-old herper and wildlife content creator from the Gainesville, Florida area with 1.5 million Instagram followers. He grew up homeschooled watching Steve Irwin and Austin Stevens, caught his first black racer at five or six, and turned serious about field herping in 2019 after finding his lifer eastern indigo snake while delivering pizza in Newberry.
Yes — by the time we recorded, about a month after the bite, Orin was already back out herping. He now wears snake gaiters or snake boots in the field and encourages other herpers to do the same.
Herping is the hobby of searching for reptiles and amphibians in the wild — the field version of herpetology. Herpers target rare species the way anglers target rare fish, and the first time you find a species in the wild is called a lifer.
I had been following David's recovery on Instagram since the news broke. A guy who has handled venomous snakes nearly his whole life gets taken down by one he was not even trying to catch — that alone is a story. What I did not expect was how much his world overlaps with mine. The way he targets rare species, reads animal behavior, and builds an audience around a dangerous pursuit sounds exactly like what we do with fish and sharks. I wanted to hear the whole thing from him directly, not filtered through headlines. He delivered far more than I anticipated.
David never saw the snake. He looked down expecting a gator — they were thirty feet from the water — and instead found a four-foot diamondback clamped onto his leg. He describes the strike as a steel bear trap closing, then walks me through the adrenaline wearing off, the pain becoming unbearable, and a secondary reaction he never anticipated: his face going numb and his throat starting to close. The minute-by-minute account of those first thirty minutes, with no EpiPen and a long drive to help, is unlike anything I have heard on this show. Press play and hear him tell it from the first second.
This is the part of the conversation that stunned me. The first medical team wanted to start David at six vials of antivenom — he knew from his 2017 pygmy rattlesnake bite, which took twelve vials for a finger strike, that six was nowhere near enough for a full diamondback envenomation. He and his family had to advocate relentlessly, waiting roughly three hours for a second dose and close to nine hours for a third. He ultimately tied the record for antivenom ever administered at Shands Hospital. His explanation of why he refused the fasciotomy the surgeons pushed, and what the peer-reviewed literature says, is worth the listen on its own.
David grew up watching Steve Irwin and Austin Stevens, caught his first black racer at five or six with his mom's help, and spent three and a half years delivering pizza on the dirt roads west of Gainesville so he could herp between deliveries. Then came a four-day stretch in 2019 — a lifer eastern indigo, a Florida pine snake, a southern hognose, an eastern mud snake — that changed everything. He explains how that run lit up the herping community, how he grew to 1.5 million followers, and how 2024 became his big travel year. The full origin story is in the episode.
David walked away from the TV-style technique of pinning snakes and grabbing them behind the head, and he explains why he considers it more dangerous than it looks. His method now — keeping the head facing away at all times and lowering the snake the moment it turns — mirrors almost exactly how I learned to handle sharks on Saltwater Experience. We spent a long stretch comparing notes on reading animal behavior across species. If you handle any wild animal, this section alone justifies the hour.
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One month after nearly losing his leg — and possibly his life — David was already herping again. He talks honestly about the fear of seeing his next big diamondback, the drop foot he may live with permanently, the snake boots and gaiters he now wears, and the faith that carried him through thirteen nights in the ICU. He is not pretending the bite did not change him. He is also not done. How he holds both of those truths at once is the heart of this episode.
The day after this recording, I kept coming back to one moment: David, throat closing, thirty minutes from the nearest EpiPen, calmly deciding his friends could get him to help faster than an ambulance could reach him. That is a 25-year-old making life-or-death triage decisions about his own body while a hemotoxin works through his leg.
I have interviewed a lot of people who do dangerous work, and the ones who last are the ones who study their craft obsessively. David knew his envenomation literature better than some of the doctors treating him, and that knowledge may have saved his leg. There is a lesson in that for anyone who takes calculated risks outdoors.
Listen to the whole conversation. The story is still unfolding, and hearing him process it in real time is something you do not get from a headline.
David Orin, known online as @adventorin, is a 25-year-old field herper and wildlife content creator based near Gainesville, Florida, with 1.5 million Instagram followers and a growing YouTube channel. Self-taught through years of daily fieldwork, he specializes in finding and documenting rare snake species across the Southeast and beyond, and he is outspoken about safer handling practices and his Christian faith. On December 18 he survived a severe Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake envenomation that included anaphylactic shock, a record-tying course of CroFab antivenom at Shands Hospital, and ongoing recovery from nerve and muscle damage. He has since returned to the field wearing snake gaiters.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 952: David Orin, "Bitten by an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake."
Tom Rowland: If you're in Florida, you may have heard about a YouTuber and snake specialist who got bitten by a rattlesnake. That person is our guest today, David Orin. He goes by Adventure Orin on social media, he's on YouTube, and he has about a million and a half followers on Instagram. He's 25 years old, and if you haven't already been following his account, it's a fascinating one. He was bitten by a snake he wasn't even trying to handle — he was going after a different snake entirely and never saw the one that got him. This happened on December 18, so we're approaching the one-month anniversary of the bite. David has handled thousands of snakes over the years, and the one that finally got him, an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake, bit him on the leg. We're going to hear the whole story, from the bite itself through his recovery.
Tom Rowland: David, what's going on, man? Tell me about what's happened to you since December 18.
David Orin: December 18 turned out to be a pretty fateful day for me. I went out looking for snakes like I normally do with my friends and got bitten in the leg by a four-foot Eastern Diamondback, since I live here in Florida. I ended up in the ICU for thirteen nights, sixteen days total in the hospital, before I got discharged. Lucky to walk, lucky to be alive.
Tom Rowland: How's your recovery now compared to what the doctors originally forecast? I imagine at some point they said you might not walk again.
David Orin: It's hard to say, because it turns out there's not just one doctor in a situation like this — you get different people telling you different things. Our envenomation specialist, Dr. Ben Abo, wasn't on staff at Shands, but he was an outside source giving us a lot of information, and he was hopeful about my recovery. Other people, like an infectious disease doctor, gave me some pretty grim outlooks — they said there was a good chance my leg would keep necrosing and that I might need debridement or even amputation within weeks or months. Right now it looks like the myonecrosis is slowing down and my body is taking care of it itself, which is what we were hoping and praying would happen. I still have blood work coming up that will tell us more of the story. Unfortunately, I still have drop foot, where my foot just points forward and I can't dorsiflex it, so when I try to walk normally I trip over my own foot. That's been the biggest frustration of the recovery. But at the same time, I'm just happy to be out of the hospital and walking at all, because at first I couldn't even walk due to restricted blood flow and pain. Now that I'm walking and driving, the drop foot just feels like something to worry about later.
Tom Rowland: Is the drop foot from the venom itself, or from where he actually bit you — is there a muscle in the front of your shin that lifts your foot?
David Orin: I think it's from where he bit me specifically. Something a lot of doctors want to do right when you get a snake bite is a fasciotomy, where they slice you open, because a snake bite is going to make you swell up and can look like a mild case of compartment syndrome. But current, peer-reviewed snake-bite literature actually contraindicates that. As a result, I think we offended some of the orthopedic team by declining the fasciotomy, and they came back later and told us, well, now that you deferred it, this is why you have drop foot — because the pressure was on those nerves and muscles for so long. But I'm convinced the real reason I have drop foot is that the diamondback sank its fangs right into that muscle. That venom is designed to kill something like a rabbit so it can't run away — it's specialized to take out leg muscle. I think it just melted away in there. I don't know if there's a tendon surgery down the road that could help. I really think it comes down to the size of the snake, the power of the venom, and exactly where it bit me.
Tom Rowland: You're 25. How long have you been finding snakes, and how did you get started?
David Orin: I've been catching snakes pretty much my whole life. I started watching Steve Irwin when I was three or four, and Austin Stevens, Snake Master — he was a South African guy on Animal Planet I really liked, along with Jeff Corwin and the Crab brothers. My brothers and I were homeschooled, and my parents were really supportive — they'd buy me toys and books to feed the interest. I was catching geckos, and when I was five or six I caught my first black racer with my mom's help in our own yard. When I was around fifteen I remember thinking, I need to start learning how to catch venomous snakes. The guys on TV would pin the snakes down and grab them behind the head, so I thought that was the way to do it, and that's how I caught my first diamondback, cottonmouth, and coral snake. I'm not ragging on those guys — I love what they do — but personally, that's a dangerous way to interact with anything venomous. There's no need for it. You can interact with, touch, and even pick up a venomous snake relatively safely, depending on the species, without ever grabbing it behind the head.
By the grace of God, I never got bitten handling a venomous snake that way — just a couple of mishaps, this one being the worst. When I was seventeen or eighteen I got on Instagram more seriously and discovered there was a whole community built around what's called herping — field herping, where you go out and look for reptiles and amphibians as a hobby. I never went to school for it. I got my associate's degree and was done with school. I learned how to target rare species starting in 2019, and from then on I've been very serious about going out almost every day, targeting rare species, and posting about it.
Tom Rowland: Was that mostly in Florida before 2019?
David Orin: Yes, sir. Before 2019 I didn't really understand rarity — in my head I figured if I was always seeing water snakes, an eastern mud snake or a Florida pine snake had to be just as common, I just hadn't found the spot yet. Then in 2019 I had my big break. I was delivering pizza at the time for a mom-and-pop shop — three and a half years, out in the country west of Gainesville, in Newberry, covering a fifteen- or twenty-mile radius of dirt roads, so I could look for snakes while I worked. One day I was driving back, saw a big black snake on the side of the road, turned around expecting another racer, and it was my lifer — the first time you ever see a species in the wild — an eastern indigo snake. It was small, but it was so different and spectacular that it changed everything for me. The very next day I found my lifer Florida pine snake, an "S-tier," super-rare species you can go years without seeing — I'm currently twenty months without seeing another one. The day after that a southern hognose, and the day after that a hike to an eastern mud snake. That four-day stretch turned my whole world upside down and got the attention of other herpers, and I started connecting with the community, learning spots, and by 2020 I was posting seriously. Last year was my biggest travel year yet — Kansas, Oklahoma, multiple trips to Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky — because I was finally making enough from social media to fund it.
Tom Rowland: It sounds a lot like fishing — species that seem rare or hard to catch in one spot are common somewhere else, and once you find the right spot it all makes sense. You mentioned the Steve Irwin style of pinning a snake down and grabbing it behind the head, which is how you thought you were supposed to do it at first. It's a lot like handling a shark — if you grab it hard, it's going to try to bite you, but if you handle it gently you can roll it over and it'll go still. How did you move away from that style of handling, and what did you move toward?
David Orin: That's a good question, Tom. Honestly, I moved away from it for some pretty foolish reasons at first. There's a practice called freehandling, where you let a venomous snake do whatever it wants and you read its behavior. I have friends in Thailand and Hong Kong who are experts at reading snake behavior — they'll let the snake's head go and it looks safe because they're so good at reading it. When I was sixteen or seventeen, the risk factor of freehandling appealed to me — I thought it was badass to say you'd held a diamondback or a coral snake with no precautions. Over time I became convicted about it. As I grew in my relationship with Christ, I realized that wasn't the best way to handle things. But what I did learn is that if you're gentle and you're not grabbing behind the head, these snakes really don't want to bite you — I never had one bite me doing that. So I picked up what I call safe freehandling: I'll hold a venomous snake up by the tail, keeping its head facing away from me at all times, and I only do it if I think the individual is calm enough. Believe it or not, the bigger the snake, the easier it is to work with — more wiggle room. As soon as the head starts to turn, I lower the snake and I'm out of strike range. It's a combination of reading the snake's behavior while always keeping the head pointed away from me. If you want to get hands-on with something you love, that's a great way to do it safely — a diamondback feels cool alive, and you don't have to kill it to feel it.
Tom Rowland: I noticed in your videos you'll reach down and grab a snake, and it turns around and bites you, and you don't even flinch — because you know it's non-venomous. There was one clip of what looked like a Florida water snake that looked very dangerous to me, but you knew it wasn't, grabbed it, and it bit your arm without fazing you. How do you know so quickly which ones are safe to handle that way?
David Orin: In Florida we have around 48 or so snake species, and only six are venomous — and one of those, the copperhead, barely dips into the Panhandle. So really only five, and in peninsular Florida you only have four to worry about: coral snake, pygmy rattlesnake, cottonmouth, and eastern diamondback. Learn those four and every other snake in the peninsula is safe to handle. Some states only have two venomous species. If you take the time to learn the venomous ones, everything else becomes safe. And I think I know exactly why that water snake looked dangerous — a lot of water snakes will flatten their heads to imitate a venomous snake and scare off predators, though ironically that sometimes gets them killed by people who think they're dangerous.
Tom Rowland: I've got some experience with fish that people don't want to handle — sharks, barracuda, kingfish, things with teeth — and it's the same idea. If you try to manhandle the fish you'll get bit. If you go slow and read its behavior, you can feel it start to twitch and pull back before it happens. I'd imagine the more experience you get with snakes, the more you can feel and identify that same behavior.
David Orin: That's exactly right, Tom. And here's something funny — a non-venomous snake bite genuinely does not hurt. I used to rank snake-bite pain on a scale, and I'd always rank it a one or a two, because I wanted people to know these snakes have tiny teeth. It might startle you if you're not expecting it, but it doesn't hurt. Honestly, I've gotten hurt worse handling a mad tom catfish than any snake bite. I'm actually nervous around fish with spines because I don't have the experience there — it's the same as some people being totally comfortable around horses that could kill them with one kick, while others are terrified. It comes down to experience, confidence, and also knowing when a situation isn't safe.
Tom Rowland: On the snake that got you, what was different? It didn't even look like you saw it coming.
David Orin: That's right. We'd had our Bible study the night before and invited two people, Elijah and Grace, who'd never been herping, to come out with me, my best friend Aiden, and my wife Emma, who had to work that day. It was a beautiful 75-degree, cloudy day — perfect conditions to look for a rare king snake that lives along the Florida coast. We went out to Dixie County, on the Nature Coast, near Shired Island. We hadn't found much all day. A turtle crossed the road, so we hopped out to move it, and right before I got back in the car I noticed a dead tree on the shoulder. In the wintertime, even on a slightly warmer day after a cold night, you can find scarlet king snakes — the red, black, and yellow ones that mimic coral snakes — behind the bark of dead trees. It's like opening a Christmas present. So I started peeling bark, working my way around the tree for maybe fifteen seconds — nothing, nothing — and then, just, blam. I felt it hit my leg. It felt like an alligator clamping down, or a steel bear trap. I looked down expecting to see a gator, since we were close to the coast, but there was nothing behind me where I thought I'd been bitten. Then I looked two feet to my side, and there it was — a big four-foot diamondback coiled up, not even rattling, just sitting there. My heart sank. I think I said "shoot, shoot" so fast that Aiden, right behind me, thought I'd said "baby diamondback" and came over looking for something small — he never even saw the big one at first because it was so camouflaged.
I told the others to stay calm, partly because Elijah and Grace were new to herping and I didn't want them to be scared of snakes forever, and partly because I wanted to get a quick video — I knew people on social media would appreciate seeing someone stay calm through something that serious, and it might help change the perception that a snake like this needs to be killed. It was just the snake doing what a snake does. I get messages all the time from people saying I should have had a gun on me, and I always think — that's not why we're out there. I don't kill anything. I just look for these animals, and that's what I really enjoy.
Tom Rowland: You did stay remarkably calm on camera. I've watched it a hundred times — you can see your buddy's face just drop.
David Orin: He was shocked. But I knew getting worked up wasn't going to help anything.
Tom Rowland: So what happened right after the camera cut off?
David Orin: As fun as it was to get that little clip, I knew time was tissue, so it was really only about thirty seconds of filming. Then it was, alright, time to get back to the car — we need to get out of here. My leg had already started seizing up by the time I got moving. We got to the car just in time, I swung my leg in, and that's when the adrenaline started wearing off and the pain became unbearable — like my leg was rupturing. I had to get my shoe off before my foot swelled too much to get it off at all, and I had to pick my leg up with both hands, like it weighed 500 pounds, and put it up on the dash. I told Elijah to drive, drive, drive. I knew we were an hour and a half from Shands Hospital, which is where you'd go for antivenom, and about thirty minutes from the nearest fire station. Grace asked if we should call 911, and I said yes, just do it.
About twenty or thirty seconds into the drive, a secondary reaction hit that I wasn't expecting — my whole body went numb, head to toe, almost instantly, like the feeling of an IV saline drip spreading through you, or your face going numb at the dentist, except everywhere. My throat started closing. I realized two things were happening at once: I later learned from our venom specialist that the numbness was from the potent cocktail of proteins in the venom, but the throat closing was because I was going into anaphylactic shock, which I have no history of. I thought I might die right there — if you have a peanut allergy and no EpiPen, you can die, and I didn't have one. I called my wife, Emma, to tell her I loved her, thinking it might be the last time we talked. She was at work at the hospital and took the news like a champ on the phone, though she told me later she fell to her knees afterward. Thankfully my throat never closed all the way — I could keep taking short gasps of air. My leg kept getting worse the whole time. Aiden was doing ninety miles an hour, weaving around log trucks. We beat the ambulance to the fire station. The first thing I said walking in was, "I need an EpiPen," and I could feel my esophagus tightening, but they told me I was breathing fine and didn't give me one. Very shortly after, an ambulance arrived and got me loaded up — I actually kicked one of the guys in the face by accident because my leg felt so light and I couldn't control it. From there it was a ten-minute ambulance ride to a helicopter, and then a seventy-minute life-flight to Shands Hospital. On that flight, thankfully, the paramedics gave me an EpiPen, and I could breathe a little better after that.
Tom Rowland: How quickly does an EpiPen take effect in a moment like that?
David Orin: The only effect I really felt was in my throat, probably about thirty seconds after they gave it to me — I could breathe a bit better. I was also on IV fentanyl for the pain by that point.
Tom Rowland: What was the pain like? It started at "alligator bit my leg" — what did it feel like fifteen minutes later?
David Orin: It went from about a six or seven out of ten at the first strike to a ten out of ten very quickly. When I got bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake back in 2017 — I dropped my phone too close to it while filming and it caught the tip of my finger — the paramedic on that ride asked my pain level and I said three out of ten, and he told me, "I'm not your girlfriend, you can tell me the truth," and wrote down eight anyway. This time was different. I don't think I'd ever experienced a true ten out of ten before — more like a fifteen out of ten. Even with fentanyl, it was really bad.
Tom Rowland: So you get to a hospital that has antivenom on hand — what's the protocol when someone comes in with a confirmed diamondback bite, video and all?
David Orin: Honestly, it's kind of a mess. There's no reason a university hospital like Shands shouldn't know how to treat a serious snake bite, but I also try to have grace for the ER doctors — a snake bite is just one small part of what they train for, and they're not necessarily versed in how a specific species' venom affects a person. Even at the hospital they have a snake-bite severity scale, and somehow they scored me a level six, "mild envenomation," and wanted to start me on six vials of antivenom. I told them, no — I'm going to need forty or fifty vials by the end of the day, probably closer to a hundred.
Tom Rowland: How would you even know the difference between six vials and forty?
David Orin: When I got bitten by the pygmy back in 2017, I ended up needing twelve vials, and that snake was tiny by comparison. So I knew this was going to be at least forty times more severe — maybe I wouldn't need forty times the vials, but I knew it would be far more than six or twelve. They eventually gave me ten, but it took two and a half hours of bureaucracy just to get that first dose while the swelling kept getting worse. Protocol, according to the envenomation specialists we were in contact with, is ten vials, wait an hour, monitor, repeat as needed. Instead I waited three more hours for the second dose of ten, and nearly nine hours for the third. Dr. Ben Abo, our specialist, told me later that if I'd gotten the antivenom on time, maybe I wouldn't have drop foot today — there's no way to know for sure, but slowing that destructive venom down sooner could have changed my recovery. Even after those first ten vials they wanted to stop, and we had to push them to get in touch with a toxicologist. It was a frustrating situation, honestly, and something we'll have to address with the hospital about billing, because there was a lot that went wrong.
That first night they also wanted to do a fasciotomy — slice my leg open from below the knee to the ankle on both sides, because technically it looked like compartment syndrome. But compartment syndrome from a snake bite is different from compartment syndrome from a crush injury: the swelling from venom will go down on its own with proper antivenom treatment. On top of that, I messaged someone in the herping community who'd been bitten by a large western diamondback earlier in the year, in the same part of the leg, walking on a trail without ever seeing the snake. I asked if he'd gotten a fasciotomy, and he said absolutely not — several venom specialists had told him not to, because it's dangerous with a snake bite specifically. I was already being wheeled toward the OR when I stopped and said I needed to think about it more. My wife Emma, a speech-language pathologist who's worked at Shands and understands medical terminology, was with me the whole time. At first she thought it made sense to relieve the pressure, but I asked her to help me message a few more people first, and a wave of both experienced herpers and qualified specialists all said the same thing: don't get the fasciotomy. The reasoning is that if you slice your body open, it's going to try to heal that wound on top of everything else your body is already doing to survive the venom — like fighting a war on three fronts. Either the venom keeps winning and your organs start to fail, or the open wound gets infected and you end up needing debridement or amputation anyway; something like a third of rattlesnake-bite fasciotomies end up amputated. I was that close to the OR, with the surgical team staying late trying to convince me, and I told them, thank you, but I don't want it. I think it was the right call, though the orthopedic team was fairly cold to us afterward.
Tom Rowland: Looking back, do you have any interest in seeing your case — the good decisions and the bad ones — documented for other doctors or other herpers who might go through this?
David Orin: That's part of why I'm doing interviews like this — I want people to get a glimpse into this world. My wife kept very thorough notes of everything on her Instagram, day by day, sometimes minute by minute, and at least one doctor already reached out about possibly using it for a thesis. I'd love for my own mishaps to end up helping someone else down the road, especially around getting antivenom administered quickly. The biggest reason hospitals hesitate is cost — it's about fifteen thousand dollars per vial. I ended up tying the record for the most antivenom ever given at Shands for a Crotalus bite, eighty-eight vials, which is probably close to a world record for that kind of bite.
Tom Rowland: Is the diamondback the most potent venomous snake in the country?
David Orin: Not exactly the most potent — the coral snake is technically the most toxic per drop, but it's neurotoxic and the snake itself is small. I'd say the most serious envenomation you can get in the U.S. is from an adult diamondback, because the sheer volume of venom they deliver outweighs toxicity alone.
Tom Rowland: You clearly know a lot about snake biology and behavior — why does a four-foot snake need enough venom to kill something far bigger than it could ever eat?
David Orin: Good question, and I actually addressed this in the caption on my own Instagram post. My faith is the number one thing that defines me, more than being a snake guy, and I'm a creationist — I take the account in Genesis seriously. In Genesis, before the fall, there's no death: God gives every green plant for food to every creature, and mankind doesn't get permission to eat meat until after the flood, in the Noahic covenant. After the fall, animals begin to die and microevolve, developing the need to kill in order to survive. We don't know what the first snake looked like in the garden, but over roughly six thousand years, a creature like the diamondback's ancestor would have evolved differently. Their main prey, rabbits, are very fast — it does a snake no good to bite a rabbit that then runs eight miles away and dies where it'll never be found. Over time, natural selection favored snakes whose venom killed prey faster, so a diamondback's strike can start paralyzing and killing a rabbit within twenty or thirty seconds, and the snake can catch up to it within a few minutes.
Tom Rowland: So it's potent specifically so the prey doesn't get away.
David Orin: That's right — that's how I understand it, anyway.
Tom Rowland: Since you know scripture and you clearly understand snake behavior firsthand, I have to ask — what's your take on snake-handling churches?
David Orin: I'll be honest, I'm against it, and I think the underlying theology in those churches is pretty misguided. It usually traces back to a small, disputed passage at the very end of the Gospel of Mark — many translations even flag that it may not belong in the original text — that says believers "will pick up serpents" and be unharmed. Some of those churches lift that single verse out of context and build an entire practice around it as proof of having the Holy Spirit. The truth is, anyone can pick up a rattlesnake safely if they handle it gently — it has nothing to do with faith — and a rattlesnake will bite anyone, faithful or not, who handles it wrong. I wouldn't recommend it, and I don't think any Christian should treat handling a snake as some kind of spiritual test.
Tom Rowland: Where do you go from here? How long do you expect the recovery to take, and how soon will you be back out looking for snakes?
David Orin: I was already back out there three days ago, back in diamondback habitat.
Tom Rowland: How do you think you'll feel the first time you see one?
David Orin: If it's small, I probably won't think twice. If it's a big one, I think I'll feel a little bit of PTSD and some mixed emotions — even after my pygmy bite, the first few pygmies I saw afterward were a little nerve-wracking, and that faded with time. But it would take an especially calm diamondback for me to ever feel comfortable handling one again, given what's at stake now.
Tom Rowland: But this time you weren't even handling the snake.
David Orin: No, I wasn't. I've handled diamondbacks before with no problem — there's one I remember finding tubing down the Ichetucknee River a couple of years ago, a big, gorgeous five-foot diamondback basking in cold, 72-degree water. Because it was so cold it was lethargic, so I could handle it almost like a puppy, still keeping the head facing away, though I could barely lift it. That was one of the most exciting finds of my life. I hope one day I get to have an experience like that again.
Tom Rowland: What would you do differently now? Would you carry an EpiPen, keep different emergency numbers, change your first-aid kit? What would you tell other herpers?
David Orin: It doesn't hurt to carry an EpiPen — I'll definitely be carrying one now, since I've been told even a couple of fire ant bites could send me into anaphylactic shock at this point. You typically build up either an immunity or an allergy to venom over repeated exposure, and it looks like I may be headed down the allergy path rather than the immunity one. I'll also be wearing snake boots or gaiters from now on — I was actually wearing jeans when I got bitten, which obviously did nothing. The response from the herping community has been great; a lot of people have already sent me pictures of the snake boots they've bought since hearing my story.
Tom Rowland: The scary part is you weren't even looking for that kind of snake — it wasn't even on your radar. It could happen to anyone. As a turkey hunter myself, it surprises me that more turkey hunters in Florida don't get bitten more often, since you're moving fast through the woods and then sitting down quickly.
David Orin: It does surprise me too. Nobody on my entire care team at Shands had ever treated an actual diamondback bite before — only one person in the whole hospital stay had ever worked a case close to it, which made me pretty nervous. I don't know exactly why it doesn't happen more — maybe more hunters wear protective boots than I'd think.
Tom Rowland: Are you doing anything specific on your own to speed up the recovery?
David Orin: I want to get into physical therapy as soon as possible for my foot, in case there's still a chance to save full function, but my first appointment isn't until the 21st. In the meantime I've been doing my own version of PT — moving around as much as I can, which the hospital recommended. I can drive now, which means everything to me since I put fifty or sixty thousand miles a year on my truck looking for snakes. I can walk with a limp, though if I walk normally I trip on the drop foot. Someone reached out just last night about a company that makes a special sock, using carbon fiber, specifically for drop foot, so I'm going to follow up on that. A friend from Bible study also suggested I try hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which is supposed to help vascularity and blood flow.
Tom Rowland: I think that can be really helpful — I spent a day with Diamond Dallas Page, the professional wrestler, who created DDP Yoga after his own body got beat up from years in the ring, and one of the things he swears by is getting in a hyperbaric chamber daily.
David Orin: That's awesome — I'm excited to try it.
Tom Rowland: Before we wrap up, I have to ask — on one of your posts you were somewhere that looked like the flats where we fish, and you caught something called a salt marsh snake. I've only seen one myself, once, on a flat up near Steinhatchee where I used to go test fly rods for Scott Fly Rods. It was sitting completely still on the bottom — I thought a friend had planted a rubber snake as a joke — until I touched it with my rod and it took off.
David Orin: That would have been a Gulf salt marsh snake, or down toward the mangroves, a mangrove salt marsh snake — beautiful animals, genus Nerodea, same family as brown water snakes, green water snakes, and Florida banded water snakes. They're pretty common in the right spots — cruise down Flamingo Road in Everglades National Park on a warm night and you might see eight or nine of them, with some bright orange and some much darker. Completely harmless, and they primarily eat small fish and frogs.
Tom Rowland: Good to know — I won't be afraid of it next time I see one.
Tom Rowland: I hope to see you back out there doing your thing soon — you've built an awesome following. Where do you post most?
David Orin: Instagram is my favorite — I love posting to my stories. My YouTube channel, David Orin, is smaller, around 200,000, but it's the one I'm really trying to grow this year. I've got a backlog of vlogs from last year's trips to Arkansas and Kansas, catching a badger and all kinds of stuff, and it'll eventually lead up to the diamondback bite. I'm also on TikTok, where I actually have my biggest following, around 2.4 million, though I've slowed down there and who knows if it survives a ban.
Tom Rowland: Did you ever picture having your own TV show, the way Austin Stevens or Forrest Galante did? We've had Forrest on the show.
David Orin: I did — that was the dream. When I first started blowing up in 2020 through 2022, a lot of media people reached out and we built pitch decks, but it always fell through, because I always said upfront that I was going to be outspoken about my faith on any show we did, and eventually the networks would come back and say I couldn't really say that. I'm actually glad those deals fell apart, honestly — a lot of TV in this space has gotten pretty sensationalized. I grew up loving the Jeremy Wade River Monsters stuff, even if that had its own sensational edge.
Tom Rowland: Done well, it's really just good storytelling, whether it's snakes or fish or hunting.
David Orin: Exactly — and at this point I've got my own show on YouTube. I'm the director and the producer.
Tom Rowland: Well, listen, I really appreciate you doing this, and I wish you all the best in your recovery. Sounds like you're doing all the right things — definitely look into that hyperbaric chamber. Great to get to know you.
David Orin: Likewise, thank you so much, Tom, for having me on. And if you're ever in North Florida, I live in Gainesville — if you ever want to try herping, I'd love to take you out.
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