CORPUS CHRISTI, TX -- When a Texas man heard his wife scream in the garden because she had nearly grabbed a rattlesnake, he did what any husband would do: he rushed over with a shovel and cut its head off.

But even when detached from its body, a rattlesnake head can still bite. And Jeremy Sutcliffe found that out the hard way. On the weekend of May 27, Jennifer Sutcliffe was doing some yard work before a planned family cookout, The Washington Post reported. When she reached down to grab some weeds, she shrieked. A 4-foot western diamondback rattlesnake was hiding in the flowers.

"I reached down to pull out a little area of grass that was growing around one of my flowers, and I almost grabbed the snake," she told the newspaper. "The snake was not happy about that at all. It came up with its head, so I screamed." Her husband, Jeremy Sutcliffe, heard his wife's cries and rushed over.

"My husband came over and grabbed a shovel and cut off the head," Jennifer Sutcliffe told Global News. "We have very small dogs and I have a grandchild who was luckily not there at the time." Thinking the snake was dead, he walked over to its body about 10 minutes later. That's when Jennifer Sutcliffe heard him scream.

"The head actually turned around and grabbed onto his hand. He had to rip the snake's head off," she told the news outlet. "He got all of the snake's venom in the bite."

A severed snake head can still bite - and more importantly, release venom - for more than an hour after being detached. And that's exactly what happened, she says.

She immediately called 911 and tried to find a hospital that had anti-venom. The nearest one was more than an hour away. They started driving. During the ride, Jeremy Sutcliffe began slipping in and out of consciousness. He began having seizures and was bleeding internally.