Hello, my name is Carter. I am 11 years old. My family and I are in Death Valley, a desert in California. My mom is a doctor trying to get antivenom for rattlesnake bites. My dad is a scientist studying how scorpions make venom. My parents went off to look for some scorpions and rattlesnakes. After about an hour I got bored.

“Mom, can I go explore?” I said.

“Sure honey,” Mom said.

“Your dad and I will be here,” said Mom.

“Ok, see you later.”  Then, I grabbed my backpack and cantine and started to walk away from our campsite. As I walked away I thought to myself I'm  so hungry I could eat a horse. I pulled out a granola bar.

As I started to walk away I thought to myself, I hope don’t run out of water. I walked for a while and then eventually stopped in front of a big cave.“Hello!” I yelled. The sign beside it said “mine” so I took a deep breath and walked in. Once in the mine, I climbed down a long, oily rope. All of a sudden about halfway down it snapped and I fell to the bottom. As soon as I got up on my feet I felt the air around me. It was cold. I tried looking for some way to get out but couldn't find anything. Then it struck me. I knew I was trapped!

I was trying to find a way out and got tired. Eventually,I  gave up and fell asleep at the bottom of the crevice for about an hour. When I woke up I had a stinging pain in my ankle. I pulled down my sock and saw that I had 2 holes in my skin and knew what had happened. I had been bitten by a rattlesnake. It started hurting more and more by the hour. About 2 hours later I could barely walk.  “How could I let this happen to myself? I was being so dumb!” I hope it wasn’t a baby `snake because they don’t know how to control their venom so normally they will inject triple the amount of a normal dose of venom.