POOLESVILLE, Md. - Sources say a 36-year-old Maryland man survived after being bit by a poisonous snake outside his Maryland home.

Sam Pettengill has war wounds from a nasty encounter with a venomous snake.

"The first puncture wound was right here and then the second bite was one fang right there," he said. "This is like just in a few seconds it bites twice and I thought, "That hurt way too much for a tiny little garden snake.'"

What had bitten him was a Copperhead, one of two venomous snakes in Maryland. Sources say less than 10 people a year are injured by the reptiles.

Pettengill was attacked when he picked up the snake that had somehow made its way into his home at the Buddhist temple in Poolesville Sunday night.

"Had I thought that there was a chance that it was poisonous I would've been much more.. I would've been cautious," said Pettengill. "So it's my fault for underestimating."

The Montgomery County (web | news) man has been in the hospital for three days. Doctors say a snake bite is nothing to ignore. "Stay calm... get yourself to a hospital -- keep the extremity or the part below the heart if possible," said Dr. David Srour of Shady Grove Hospital.  

Pettengill is a Buddhist who does not believe in taking the lives of living creatures so instead of killing the Copperhead, he captured it and then took it to a sacred prayer site.

"For Buddhists that's like par for the course -- that's not anything special," said Pettengill. "Where other people think, 'You prayed for that snake that bit you on the hand?'" "And I say, 'Yeah! Of course,'" he said.

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