Elmore FC
October
Spider bite puts Steve Harris in the headlines
Friends and team-mates of Steve Harris, thought he was having
a laugh when he pulled out of the Elmore squad because of a
spider bite!
“They operated on me immediately and it took half an hour to cut
away the area around the bite to get at the poison. Afterwards I
had an open wound and have to wait for it to heal over.
But the classy 22-year-old defender from Dawlish was deadly
serious.
“I have never had pain like that before in my life. I couldn’t sleep
properly for a while and found it virtually impossible to get in and
out of a car.”
For Steve had been bitten by Britain’s most venomous spider – the
false black widow – and had to undergo an emergency operation
at Torbay Hospital.
He had an open wound where surgeons had to cut away the poison
and was told he could not play football for at least three weeks.
Steve, who in his teens had spells at Plymouth Argyle, Norwich
City, Yeovil Town and Salisbury, and joined Elmore two years ago
from Cullompton Rangers, was bitten in his sleep.
He said: “When I work up I had a pain in my side – a stinging
feeling. I didn’t take that much notice until it started swelling and
the pain got worse.
“It looked like a bite, although I didn’t know it was from a spider at
the time. The area around the bite mark just ballooned . I was in
agony, but it was only when the area started to turn black, some
four days after I first noticed the bite, that I decided I ought to go
to hospital.
“I went to Torbay Hospital and they diagnosed a spider bite – they
said they had seen six other people with similar bites within the
previous week. They told me the false black widow spider was the
culprit.
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His Elmore team-mates were only convinced he was not pulling
their leg when he showed them a photo of his open wound.
n The false black widow spider (steatoda nobilis) is the most
dangerous of the 12 species of biting spider known in Britain. It
is thought to have arrived in the country in crates of fruit from
the Canary Islands at the end of the 1870s. It was first reported in
Torquay in 1879.
They have been established in Devon for a long time and recent
climate change has seen the population spread across the South
East.
The spider belongs to the same family as the infamous Black
Widow spider, although nowhere near as toxic. It is quite
commonly mistaken for its famous cousin, hence the name false
black widow spider. About the size of a 50p piece, it has a dark,
shiny bulbous body with a creamy coloured band all around
the front. They do have a reputation for biting, although it is
considered quite a rare occurrence. People bitten by the spider
experience acute burning pain, swelling and a general sick feeling.
The bite mark area usually turns black and yellow. Recently there
has been a couple of instances of people being bitten by the
spider in the London and Kent area.