The mushrooming phenomenon of selfies appears to have a … Darwinian parameter.
The latest shocking incident during the taking of a selfie involves a 36-year-old California man and another creature in his attempted selfie: a rattlesnake.
According to the LA Times, the hospitalized Lake Elsinore man could lose his hand.
The victim initially told paramedics that he was bitten while working, but Alex Gomez’s mother set the record straight.
When Gomez heard his mother was granting interviews to local media, he pleaded with her to not talk.
“I said ‘I’m going to,’” Deborah Gomez said. “Yeah, I’m going to teach him a real good lesson when he gets home. No mercy for him.”
She said her son’s skin was “rotting away” near the wound.
Photos broadcast by the station showed Alex Gomez wearing sunglasses and stretching out a snake near his face. Sometime after that photo was taken, the rattlesnake sunk its fangs into his hand.
“It was really thick…. It was rattling, it was pretty mad, yeah,” Gomez’s nephew, Ronnie, told the station.