Victor Pratt may not be a novice when it comes to handling rattlesnakes, but he proved it can often go wrong even when you know what you’re doing when handling this deadly species. Fortunately, he’s regained cosciousness at a hospital in Phoenix after being bitten by one, his face swollen up like a balloon, but he nearly paid the ultimate price after wrestling with one recently.

Pratt was at his son’s birthday party at a lake outside of Phoenix when he noticed a rattlesnake. He decided to use it as an opportunity to teach those in attendance how to catch it, and played with it a little bit as well, admitting to local TV station Fox 10 that he was “showing off” a little bit.

However, it suddenly got loose, and latched on to his face at one point. Its venom spreads in seconds, so he knew he didn’t have much time. His sons took him to a nearby emergency room, where a doctor inserted a tube into his airway to keep him breathing as the poison caused his tissue to swell.

“There is a 100 percent chance he would have died if he’d not have made it to the hospital within minutes,” said Steven Curry, director of the department of medical toxicology at Banner-University Medical Center Phoenix, according to a Washington Post report. “The facial swelling is so immense that even your tongue and lips and the inside of your throat swell. In simple terms, it would be strangulation.”

Pratt slipped into unconsciousness for several days as doctors treated him with 28 vials of antivenin.

Pratt had some advice when he spoked to Fox 10: “Think before you go out there and play with rattlesnakes. You might not make it next time.”