The Deadily Bites
Author Unknown

One summer day two men and their wives went fishing on a well-known lake. They had a boat and some of the finest equipment, and were looking forward to a good catch. They fished for several hours, but hadn't gotten as much as one bite, so they decided to pack up and return home. It intrigued them, however, to see a small boy on the shore pulling one fish after another.

Curiously, one of the women walked over to the little boy to find out just how he was catching all those fish. The little fellow, happy to explain his success, pointed to an old rotten log.

"There are a lot of worms under that log," he replied, "and they make good bait, although they bite your hand a bit when you put them on the hook. Help yourself; there are plenty of them."

Lifting up the log the woman looked, and there, to her surprise, she saw not worms, but a nest of dozens of poisonous baby copperhead snakes!

"Those aren't worms -- they're copperheads!" she called to the boy. "Let me look at your hands."

The boy's hands were covered with tiny bites, and already were beginning to swell from the poison. They rushd him to the doctor, who injected some anti-venom serum, and the boy's life was saved. The doctor estimated that the amount of poison from the little bites actually equalled the bite of a full-grown copperhead. Another hour and it would have been too late!

This little boy was very innocently handling the snakes, not realizing that they were poisonous. They were actually destroying him. He was using them to his own advantage, so he thought, but they would have caused his death.