Pregnant mother Jaclyn Caramazza and her family were walking along a bike trail in Folsom, Calif., when her son Vinny, 4, stepped on a baby rattlesnake. After a few minutes, the boy's foot turned purple and started swelling up.
Caramazza removed her son's shoes and found two puncture wounds. Her motherly instincts took over as she rushed to the young boy's rescue and attempted to suck the rattlesnake venom out, a technique that put both herself and her unborn baby at risk, reported the Los Angeles Times.
"My first reaction, after seeing something on TV back in the day, is to suck the venom out, and not thinking about being pregnant and what that would do to me," she said.
The mother extracted the poison from her son's ankle three times with her mouth, but only realized later that it was an extremely risky thing to do—it could have exposed herself and her unborn child to the snake's venom, according to USA Today.
Vinny was rushed to the nearest hospital and was treated with anti-venom and antibiotics. He was discharged from the hospital two days later, and is now back home recovering.
Rattlesnake sightings are on the rise, as a result of the warm, dry weather that has gripped much of the West. A 2-year-old girl was bitten by a rattlesnake in suburban San Francisco on Tuesday. She was playing in her backyard when the serpent attacked her, according to Fox News.
