He may not have won Survivor, but Jake Latimer can still call himself a survivor.
The contestant on season 49 of the reality competition series was airlifted out of Fiji and subsequently pulled from the game after being bitten by a highly venomous banded sea krait snake while standing in the water near his tribe's beach, and now he's opening up about the harrowing moment for the first time.
"I opened my eyes, and the snake is latched onto the bottom of my foot, mouth wide open," Jake recalled in an interview with Entertainment Weekly published Oct. 9. "But it didn't hurt at the time. I just felt a tingling kind of sensation. And that's when I yelled to Alex. I'm like, 'Guys, I think this thing just bit me!' Then, as we saw on the show, everything else kind of followed after that."
The 36-year-old, who was expecting his first child at the time, was then transferred by boat to production's base camp to receive treatment by the show's medical staff, who he said made him "feel safe."
"That’s when it gets real, man," he shared. "Because I don't remember who, but somebody did tell me that that was a very venomous snake and I need to get care, like, now. And when I was lying on that stretcher, man, you saw me say, 'I'm going to be a dad…' I'm getting emotional about it, talking about it right now.”
"But it's like, I'm going to be a dad," he continued. "Am I ever going to get off this island? Am I again going to see my child? Ever am I going to meet my child? And that's when it sunk in, because I had tubes coming out of me. I had oxygen masks on."
"At the end of the day, I respect their decision," he said of his mixed emotions. "I think about it every single day. I dream about it every single night. But I respect their decision and I have no hard feelings towards them pulling me out of the game."
And, in a twist of fate, Jake's son was born less than 48 hours after he landed back home in the U.S.
"At the end of the day, I respect their decision," he said of his mixed emotions. "I think about it every single day. I dream about it every single night. But I respect their decision and I have no hard feelings towards them pulling me out of the game."
And, in a twist of fate, Jake's son was born less than 48 hours after he landed back home in the U.S.
"God works in mysterious ways," he mused. "I think that God put that snake there for a reason, just to get me home. And I hate saying that because I wanted that game so bad, but I also got to see the birth of Jax, and that's worth a million dollars. And I was there for my wife. So it's a blessing in disguise. I'm [otherwise] never going to get that experience back of seeing my kid be born. Even though, like I said, I have unfinished business out there."
Keep reading for more on Survivor season 49...
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