That afternoon, I called a local marine biologist. She identified the creature as a roughtail stingray—a species known to inhabit the Atlantic coast.
She also told me something that kept me up that night.
“Roughtail stingrays have one or more venomous barbs near the base of their tail. They use them for defense. If you had stepped on it or touched the tail, you could have been impaled.”
“How bad is the venom?”
“Excruciatingly painful,” she said. “It can cause swelling, muscle cramps, nausea, and in rare cases, secondary infections or even death. The barb can also cause serious physical trauma—it’s serrated, like a jagged knife.”
She told me about Steve Irwin, the famous “Crocodile Hunter,” who was killed by a stingray barb that pierced his heart.
I felt sick.
I had been standing within inches of the tail. Charlie had been sniffing it. We could have been hurt—or worse.
