Video: Florida man spots ‘rarely seen’ rainbow snake in creek

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A 7-year-old girl is recovering after she was bitten by a water moccasin at a Florida park earlier this month.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported that 7-year-old Daniella Cabrera was playing hide-and-seek in Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach when she felt a sharp strike on her wrist.

The kids playing with Daniella tried to identify the snake from a glimpse they caught and thought it was a corn snake, which has a similar pattern to a water moccasin, also known as a cottonmouth.

These images show the differences between a corn snake (left) and a water moccasin (right). (Credit: Getty Images)

Daniella’s father, Michael Cabrera, looked at photos of a corn sake and the bite but noticed that corn snakes appear to have rows of teeth, not fangs.

“I’m not very familiar with snake bites. I thought, let me calm down a minute. There doesn’t seem to be any swelling. Let’s give it 10 minutes. She didn’t have any symptoms,” Michael told the Sun Sentinel.

As a precaution, he took his daughter to the emergency room.

Doctors at Broward Health told Michael that the bite looked more like a water moccasin bite because of the twin incisors. They gave Daniella IVs to flush out her system.

Doctors said the bite was likely a venomous adult water moccasin and suspected it was a “dry bite,” meaning that the snake had not injected any venom.

“She was a very lucky girl,” said Naomi Reinfeld Cabrera, Daniella’s mother.

Doctors said Daniella’s bloodwork was a little off so she was kept overnight.

“My daughter wasn’t attacking the snake or anything. It seems the snake was just letting her know, ‘Hey, I’m here, what are you doing?’ Like a warning bite,” Michael Cabrera said.

When trying to identify a snake, wilderness emergency medic venom response specialist Ben Abo told the Sun Sentinel that “you can’t go by skin pattern of lack of pattern.”

“The only way to really tell is that water moccasins have a shield that goes over the eye, but if you can make that out, you’re too close,” he said.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said cottonmouths can be found throughout Florida in wet areas,  including streams, lakes, marshes, swamps, retention ponds, and roadside ditches, although they can wander far from water.