“See how she’s trying to get me,” Jeff Leibowitz says as he holds a thin grey snake between his thumb and forefinger.
The snake influencer, an advocate of a controversial practice known as free-handling, is demonstrating to his 15,000 Instagram followers how he uses his bare hands to control his pet inland taipan, one of the world’s most venomous snakes.
By applying pressure to the reptile’s body as it tries to twist around and bite him, he can prevent any accidents, he assures viewers.
“There’s no need to be so scared of them if you know their limitations,” Mr Leibowitz says, as the Australian desert snake lashes around in a thin layer of water.
Hours later, he was critically ill in hospital. The inland taipan, which he cooed over as “my sweet girl” in an earlier video, had managed to escape his grasp and plant its fangs into his hand.
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The near-fatal accident in Florence, South Carolina, caused disquiet among snake owners and prompted complaints that the online trend for free-handling, in which daredevils compete to show how they can tame their lethal pets, is painting them all in a bad light.
“You cannot tame a snake, they act on instinct,” Mark O’Shea MBE, professor of herpetology at the University of Wolverhampton, told The Telegraph.
He called Mr Leibowitz’s attempts to control snakes using some kind of pseudoscience “mind-boggling”, saying: “It is incredibly foolish to free-handle something as lethal as an inland taipan.”
Research on the animal’s venom suggests it is potent enough to kill 100 adult men in a single bite.
Prof O’Shea, who has worked with reptiles for over four decades, said he hoped what happened could serve as a warning to Mr Leibiwotz’s followers. “There is no need to do such a thing unless you are showing off, it comes down to pure ego.”
But Mr Leibowitz had always waved off his critics who saw him as an unnecessary risk-taker. His take on it was clear – all or nothing, as he recently declared: “Antivenom is for pussies.”
Last week, he posted a clip of him holding his eastern diamondback rattlesnake “Shaky” near to his face. He described the largest venomous snake in North America as “cuddly”.
“Look at this medicine I take, it’s called ‘f—–g it all’… coming soon to a pharmacy near you,” he told his critics as Shaky tried to lurch at his face.
A day before, he filmed himself stroking the head of “Asparagus”, a green mamba whose bite could kill him in less than 30 minutes.
But on the evening of Sept 5, a post suddenly appeared on Venomous Snakes Classifieds, Mr Leibowitz’s 49,000-strong Facebook group dedicated to those who share a love of dangerous snakes.
“Who has a meeting access to anti-venom for an inland taipan,” he wrote somewhat incoherently at 11pm.
At 2am, he wrote another post, urging “anyone who has antivenom for an inland taipan or knows someone please call McLeod hospital” where he had been taken after being bitten.
The antivenom was in short supply in South Carolina due to a prior inland taipan snake bite in recent months, the police report said. The treatment had to be reportedly flown in from Florida.
Mr Leibowitz’s family later shared an update to his friends and fans, saying he had been given antivenom and was in intensive care on a ventilator.
Experts say he could be facing long-lasting or permanent organ damage and that the delay in receiving antivenom likely led to prolonged bleeding.
On Venomous Snakes Classified, amid the well-wishers and those desperate for updates, were snake enthusiasts who called what happened a disaster that had been waiting to happen.
One wrote that Mr Leibowitz’s “own negligence and his lack [of] safety precautions” led him to get bitten, another called it “natural selection”.
“Jeff was being reckless and got bit now he’s put others’ lives at risk and the hobby at risk,” a third responded.
On Thursday, Mr Leibowitz recorded himself mumbling something in a woozy voice from a hospital bed before showing pictures of his purple arm and the mark of a snake bite on his hand.
He is still said to be in serious condition and receiving dialysis, a likely sign he suffered organ damage from the toxic venom.
Police said that two cats and 14 snakes – including rattlesnakes, vipers, cobras, a green mamba, a death adder and an inland taipan – were seized from Mr Leibowitz’s home.
The animals were removed over concerns of disease after police found what they called “substandard living conditions”, describing a house full of urine, faeces and raw and rotting meat.
All 14 snakes were euthanised on Monday night, authorities confirmed, after no zoos or reptile farms in the state would accept them due to the safety risks.