If you have been bitten by an animal badly enough to have to go to the emergency room, what bit you?

A “friendly little pit bull”. I was walking down a sidewalk in an urban area when I passed by it and its owner and it decided I was snack time. The small woman owner couldn’t control it and when I was able to get it off I luckily could run inside a building. Two good Samaritans who saw the attack followed the woman to her home and called the police to tell them where she was.

I initially told the owner cover my hospital bills and rehab and let’s call it a day. Instead she tried to blame me because I looked “intimidating” to her dog (what she told police). Luckily the good Samaritans provided a statement to police stating they just saw me walking down the street like every other person.

I was out thousands in medical bills and lost workdays and she wouldn’t pay so I sued her and she dodged process servers so we got a judge to file a bench warrant for her arrest. That got her to court real quick and instead of paying $5k in medical bills she ended up posting me $110k, some was covered by her policy but she was still out of pocket $35k according to the discussions my lawyer had with her lawyer and insurance company

A big darn dragonfly. It took quite a large chunk out of my arm, and it ended up badly infected in no time

Not me but a former Co worker was bitten by something unknown. He went out fishing, I don't know if alcohol was included but I wouldn't be surprised. He got home and noticed two puncture wounds on the back of his leg. Over the next few days his leg really hurt, he went to the doctor was basically told it's just a little inflamed here's some ibuprofen.

Another week goes by still in pain so he goes back. Might be a mild infection heres some antibiotics.

A few days go by and pain is getting worse. He goes to hospital. The check him out, he is going into sepsis and his kidneys and liver are shutting down. They put him in a medical induced coma. Once they stabilize him they run more tests, they find stage 4 lung cancer. They send him to some cancer hospital in Kentucky. He arrives late at night(still in coma). They put him in a room. They check on him the next morning and he is dead.

Cat. My pet cat. It wasn’t her fault, the window was open on the sill she was sitting on and abruptly closed on its own, on her paw.

So she understandably freaked out. When I ran to open it, she bit me on the finger.

Long story short, I went to a couple of Urgent Care centers before the ER. My mom had been told that I was allergic to penicillin when I was a child, so I told the medical staff this. After a couple of days, whatever else they were giving me wasn’t working and I woke up with red streaks going up my arm and my finger swollen to over twice its size.

Went to the ER. They said if I didn’t have penicillin, I could lose my finger. They also said it was common back in the day to mistake a certain reaction to it as being allergic, so maybe I wasn’t allergic. But they monitored me closely just in case.

Penicillin FTW. Not allergic. Spent 2 days in the hospital getting a constant IV drip of this modern medicinal miracle. Still have all 8 fingers and 2 thumbs.

Nearly 20 years ago I was on a meeting when one of my coworkers suddenly jumps back, takes off his shoe and throws it in the middle of the room, with a scared face. Everybody looks at the shoe and out of it comes crawling a spider. At this moment the boss walks into the room and notices the spider too and says: "woah, careful, that spider is extremely venomous". The other guy then looks even more terrified.

Boss takes him to the hospital and he took the antidote within like 15 minutes from being bitten, so no big deal at the end of the day, just the story of how he was wearing a shoe with a spider in it for over an hour before it bit him. We were all laughing and cracking jokes in the afternoon but the guy was just relieved about no longer feeling the pain from it.

I have no idea what spider it was, but this happened on a small town in the Atlantic forest region of southern Brazil. My guess would be that it was a Brazilian Wandering Spider (the spider famous for giving painful long lasting erections).

A scorpion. It stung me between my toes and it was not a big one but hurt pretty bad. I went to the emergency and what scared me more than the sting was the nurse's insisting on injecting the antidote right where the little guy had u stung. The pain subsided in an hour or so but it felt like I had a bad case of pins and needles on that for for the next few days, incessantly.

Had half my face ripped off my a dog when I was a kid. Doctors put me back together incredibly well and people can't tell anything happened. I got super lucky. I almost lost my right eye and could have been super disfigured if one of the best pediatric plastic surgeons hadn't happened to be in town that day.

Worst part was spending the entire summer inside and not being allowed to do many fun things. Got bit right as summer vacation started. I had a prosthetic tearduct until mine grew back and I had to be extra careful because it could come out easily. I also had a gazillion stitches.

Where my snake bitees at?

Was biking/exploring in the woods and got bit on the ankle by what I later figured out was a copperhead. Couldn't bike to the ER so I had to bike to the edge of the woods and meet the ambalance there.

Copperhead venom digests/destroys tissue, but the antivenom can kill you since it's made from horse blood and you could be addicted, so they gave me 10 bags over the course of the night and stuck me in the ICU just in case. The person in the room next to me ended up dying from whatever they were there for. At this point my foot had swelled up like an exam glove you blew into to make a balloon. But it started going down after the 5th bag of antivenin. Which felt like ice in my veins.

The next morning basically I was good to go, but it was expensive. I was a teenager but my mom had to fight the insurance company to get them to pay which was the real horror story of all this.

Never. Weird you keep getting bit.

My savage ex-girlfriend and one crazy neighbors kid.

A friend of mine had a partner accidentally draw blood when he (consensually) bit them. It got infected and they needed quite serious hospital care. I suppose that counts.

Not me but my dad (a veterinarian who should know better) was bitten by a cat then ignored the wound until it ballooned up. They nearly had to amputate and he nearly died.

If a cat bites you hard enough to make you bleed GO TO THE DOCTOR ASAP! Their mouths are filthy and the bite will get infected

This did not end up in the ER but is a bit of a funny tale. When I was very young I got bit by a gerbil on my finger but it must of hit something somewhat significant as the blood was spurting. I wrapped a kitchen towel around it and wen to my brother who upon seeing the kitchen towel wrapped around my finger and hand for what I explained was a gerbil bite immediately started making fun of me. Oh did you get mauled by the mighty gerbil or such. Anyway he then unwound the towel and was like. holy shit. and wrapped it back up. He got it tightly wrapped with a real bandage and gauze and such that it slowed the bleeding down so that after a few hours and a rewrap it was no bleeding passed the bandage anymore.

A pure bred Akita named Misha. She was a beautiful and nice dog that some neighbors down the street has. I loved that dog and pet her whenever I went by and she was out.

One day, after walking one of the little neighbor girls to school, I stopped to pet her and she got excited and in the process of licking my face, got a fang caught in the bridge of my nose, ripping it open from top to bottom. She didn't mean to, but it happened and I had to get a bunch of stitches (and discovered that they can't numb cartilage), so the poor girl had to spend the rest of her life in a small high-fenced yard. I hated it, but I completely understood the owners wanting to make sure they didn't have to put her down over a mistake.

I'm not sure how it works in every state, but in mine rabies testing is covered by the state but kind of requires a doctor visit, (and the animal to be tested) to get the ball rolling. I think you could also go straight to the sheriff. All of that to say i went to the ER for a minor bat bite, and to make my PSA statement that if there is even a sliver of possibility that rabies is possible, don't ever assume that a minor animal bite is no big deal.

I got bit by my cat once and had to go to urgent care because my hand started swelling up pretty rapidly, and I got some pretty heavy antibiotics, but I think that's probably it. Had a dog bite too, but that didn't go deep enough to cause issue (it's a teeth thing - thin and pointy cat teeth vs wider and more dull dog teeth).

Damn homes, animals really don't like you huh?

When I first read your question, I thought it was a hypothetical situation. Like an improv exercise or something.

Anyway, I was bitten by a racoon once. Everything turned out alright in the end for both me and the racoon.

I never went to the emergency room (was traveling where there weren't doctors of any kind), but I was bitten by a black widow spider and was sick as a dog for days afterwards. Not sure if this counts for the question?

My family rescued a huge fluffy chow back in the '90s who promptly tried to bite my heart out of my chest. I still have the circular scar and it feels super good to scratch at. Dog was put down, obviously.

Guinea pig.

I was watching a school pet named Peanut. I honestly don't know what I did, but I must have scared him or something because I opened up the cave, went to give him a pet, and he bit the shit out of my hand. His teeth actually put a nice bloody gash because I had to wiggle my hand to get him off with cause his teeth to drag. My hand was gushing blood. Would have never thought a Guinea pig could do that.

I had to beg my mom not to make me get rid of Peanut for my week. I never told the school/teacher what happened because I didn't want to get in trouble. That was the last time my mom let me watch Peanut.

Just the once, but it was from a human so it was pretty shit

Out of all,
only hedgehogs bite brought me to the A&E

A cat.

The neighbor's cat managed to get through the screen window into our bedroom, but couldn't get out again. And because I wasn't thinking, I picked it up and decided to carry it downstairs. That was a mistake. It bit my hand, wrist and forearm, and scratched basically everywhere else. The bites were bleeding a LOT, especially the one on my wrist. And of course I had to get antibiotics and a tetanus shot, which meant that only were the bites hurting, I was nauseous for two weeks too.

Also a snake once. My partner made me go to the doctor, who said "yep, that's a snake bite. Call me if it's not getting better".

A tick

Edit for whole story:
Didn't even notice the bite, but about 2 weeks after a hiking trip, I noticed a red rash on the side of my lower leg.
I waited for it to go away on its own but it didn't.
It grew into a 10 inch by 5 inch bright red patch that itched, felt like rice paper and hurt to the touch.
The edge around it turned a different color every day.

So one morning, my girlfriend at the time had enough and basically forced me to seek medical help.
Problem was, it was a Sunday, and the doctors in my area were currently on strike.
So I rode the bus to the hospital, and had a bit of a surreal experience there.
(I was running a high fever by now, so my recollection is to be taken with a grain of salt)

I distinctly remember walking into the emergency room of the hospital through the entrance for ambulances, cause all other doors were closed.
At some point I was standing in a back room of sorts, no other patients around, and 3 doctors who were on strike curiously looked at my leg.

They assessed that it's definitely a burn wound. I vehemently disagreed.
So one of them wrote a prescription for a wide-band antibiotic, based on guessing.

I went to the nearest emergency pharmacy, collected the meds, took them and 3 days later the rash was gone and the skin began to heal.

my neighbor's 2 chihuahuas

Nothing else but dogs are allowed to bite me :)