Man bitten on the head by UK's only venomous snake on camping trip blames wife
A man says that he blames his wife for him getting bitten on the head by Britain’s most - and only - venomous snake.
To be fair, you’d have to be very unlucky to get bitten by any venomous snake in the UK, as we’ve only got one, and they aren’t exactly easy to find when they don’t want to be.
In fact, many people might not even know that there are venomous snakes in the UK, but there are.
What’s more, we’re not dealing with the kind of snakes you might find in Australia, Africa, or even the USA here.
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That doesn’t mean a bite is nice, but Tony Mohammed will live.
The 56-year-old and his family decided to escape to the Suffolk countryside last summer for a spot of camping, and whilst they slept Tony felt a burning sensation on his head.
After a quick wipe of his forehead, he went back to sleep and thought no more on it.
Then, upon waking up, he discovered that his head was streaming clear liquid ‘like a waterfall’.
He wasn’t in too much discomfort, and considered that he might have been bitten by a false widow spider, but eventually he went to get it checked out.
They cleaned it out with saline solution, as well as giving him some antibiotics and antihistamine cream.
Whilst he had a bit of a fever, that cleared up, and eventually the scab on his wound fell off.
It revealed two marks about a. centimetre apart that look like fangs.
So, it couldn’t have been a spider, but it might have been a snake.
Tony, from Coventry, believes that an adder may have snuck into their tent at night and bitten him on the head.
How could it manage to get in?
Well, given it was a warm night, he says his wife wanted to get a ‘cool breeze’ so suggested leaving the flysheet open, and ‘against his better judgement’ he agreed.
Tony, who hasn’t been scared away from camping by his experience, said that anyone who gets bitten by something should seek medical advice immediately, rather than wait like he did.
He said: "When I saw the puncture marks I thought straight away 'that's got to be an adder'.
"It could have even been an escaped exotic [snake], who knows?
"I don't know how many spiders would have a fang bite that's a centimetre wide, it seems pretty big for a spider.
"My eye swelled up 24 hours later, I think people on the campsite thought I'd been in a fight.
"The skin [there] now still has a different texture to the rest of the skin."
He continued: “We live in inner-city Coventry so to escape the heat we go camping.
"We ended up at this campsite in Suffolk and because it was still hot she said 'sleep with the flysheet open tonight'.
"Against my better judgement we left it open and a little more breeze came in.
"At the time I thought it wasn't a good idea, I was thinking more of mosquitoes and creepy crawlies but when we opened it I was glad of the breeze as it was hot.
"In the early hours of the morning I felt like a burning on my head. I was half asleep and was rubbing it and then went back to sleep.
"I got up in the morning and my forehead was streaming with this clear liquid.
"We went on a four-mile walk and it was just streaming and streaming like a waterfall."
He continued: "I thought 'I've got to go to a walk-in centre' so I went to one. The guy said it's probably a false widow spider bite.
"The liquid spread across my forehead and raised it up.
"The doctor said, with gravity, it was going to look like I'd had a stroke. As the liquid went down my face, that's when my eye came up.
"He gave me antibiotics and antihistamine cream and sent me on my way.
"A week later he called me asking if I was ok. I explained I'd discovered those two puncture marks and he said 'oh it's not a spider then' but didn't say what it was.
"The funny thing is in May we went to Zanzibar, the only thing we got was a couple of mosquito bites.
"We were in West Africa and nothing happened. [We go camping in the UK] and that happened."
Tom Wood