This Freak Snake Attack in a Longhorn Steakhouse Sounds Terribly Unpleasant

Copperheads are one of the most common snakes seen in the United States, and can thrive in habitats that range from forested areas, rocky environments, and desert expanses. The snake's preferred surroundings apparently also include suburban chain restaurants, because even a venomous reptile can't pass up a loaded baked potato.

Rachel Myrick, her boyfriend Mike Clem, and her 13-year-old son, Dylan, were supposed to have an uneventful dinner with friends at the Longhorn Steakhouse in Spotsylvania, Virginia. That plan lasted about 14 seconds, because Myrick was barely through the front door when she felt an excruciating pain on her left foot. According to the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, when she reached down to grab her heel, she felt something moving against her fingers (and somehow, she didn't scream bloody murder and then faint, which is more than I could hope for myself in that situation).

Clem and Dylan looked for a wasp or some other stinging insect on the floor, but instead they saw a still-wriggling, eight-inch long copperhead snake. "I freaked out," Myrick told the Free Lance-Star, adding that she yelled, "I got bit! I got bit!" The snake bit Myrick three times, twice on her toes and once on the side of her foot, and yes, it's OK if you're squirming uncomfortably in your office chair right now.

Clem killed the snake on the spot and held it for an EMT crew, so they could confirm whether it was, in fact, a copperhead. Myrick was taken to a local hospital, where the staff monitored the swelling of her foot; when she eventually had swelling that extended to her hipbone, they administered antivenom (in addition to morphine and Benadryl).

This ridiculously freakish incident happened on September 12, and Myrick spent the next five days in the hospital. She's currently on crutches, and doctors warned her that it might take her three months to fully recover. "I'm unable to do anything normal in my day-to-day life," she told WTOP. "My entire life is upside down at this point."

Longhorn Snakehouse thoughtfully comped Myrick's dinner companions' meals that night (some members of their dinner party were somehow willing to shrug it off and sit down for a ribeye or whatever) and a company spokesperson told the Washington Post that the restaurant was trying to figure out how the snake made its way into the restaurant. The managing partner of that location said that he thought the snake could have slithered in from a retention pond near the restaurant.

MUNCHIES has reached out to Longhorn Steakhouse for comment on the incident but has not yet received a response.