The Nation - News from Aug. 26, 1987

The Wal-Mart department store chain has told managers of Florida stores with garden centers to take steps to check for snakes in the wake of two incidents in which customers were bitten, company officials said. The word was sent to store managers last week after Edward Cullom, 40, of Gulf Breeze, Fla., was bitten twice by a 14-inch copperhead snake while he was looking at a plant in a Fort Walton Beach, Fla., Wal-Mart. Two days later Sandy Miller, 23, of Fort Myers, Fla., was bitten by an eight-inch pygmy rattlesnake while looking at a plant in a North Fort Myers Wal-Mart garden center.