Snake Loving Bro Tried To Kiss A Cottonmouth Snake On The Lips, Just Missed Out On A Darwin Award

Austin Hatfield is an 18-year-old bro from Ruskin, Florida who has a passion for snakes. His passion for snakes runs so deep he even kisses snakes on the lips, as seen in the video below. Presumably Austin’s into snake kissing as some sort of way to raise awareness for all snakes, and how they’re misunderstood animals that are NOT violent by nature. Unfortunately for Austin Hatfield he tried to lock lips with the wrong snake, and ended up fighting for his life after he tried to kiss an extremely venomous Cottonmouth Snake.

The snake in the video below is not the cottonmouth snake that put Austin Hatfield in the hospital, but this is Austin Hatfield showing off what I can only assume is his best bar trick:

As you can see from the video above, and Austin’s profile pic on Facebook: he loves snakes. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Snakes can make great pets for people who are into them, ‘to each his own’ and all that stuff. But when you try and catch a wild snake and kiss it on the lips, a highly venomous cottonmouth (member of the pit viper family of snakes), and you land yourself in the hospital with injuries that have you looking like Chunk from ‘The Goonies’, then something is WRONG.

WESH Orlando reports that Austin actually managed to kiss the deadly snake several times before it lashed out and bit him:

Tampa police said Hatfield caught the venomous snake in a pillowcase and kept it under his bed.
His friend claims that Hatfield kissed the snake 12 times, but on the 13th try, the 4-foot reptile struck back.
“We (were) sitting in the kitchen, and he ran out of the room saying, ‘Hospital, hospital, now, now,'” his best friend, James Belcher, said.

You know what else is REALLY wrong, besides the fact that he’s kissing a rattlesnake here? The fact that this dude wears a camouflage Florida Gators hat! BRO, GET IT TOGETHER:

Austin’s now being investigated by the state because he didn’t possess a permit to keep such a dangerous snake in his home. He was hospitalized in critical condition after swelling caused by the snake’s venom threatened his ability to breathe, but doctors were able to fight off the venom and Austin is now expected to recover.

As you can see from the feature image in this post, everything about the cottonmouth snake scream: stay the hell away from me. They are an extremely venomous species that shouldn’t be handled by anyone other than trained professionals. Trained professional = / = 18-year-old kid from the boonies of Tampa.