A 13-year-old girl bitten by a suspected false widow spider may be scarred for life after her cheek grew – to the size of a GOLF BALL.
Schoolgirl Amelia Nielsen was bitten by the insect during the night before she woke up the following morning to find two sinister-looking puncture marks on her cheek.
Within just days the bite, believed to be from a false widow spider, had swollen to the size of a golf ball and Amelia was admitted to hospital.
The teen had developed cellulitis, a potentially life-threatening infection of the deeper layers of skin, and was treated at Bradford Royal Infirmary, West Yorks., with antibiotics.
Medics have warned her it will be another 12 months before the scale of scarring becomes clear.
Now her mother, Adele Nielson, says she fears it was a false widow spider and has issued a stark warning to other parents to be aware of the dangerous of pests.
Mrs Nielsen, of Bradford, said: “It’s just frightening to think it could happen to a small child or baby, or parent, who doesnt know whats going on – because it can be very serious. I did all the right things with her and this still happened. Cellulitis can kill you ultimately. I know that’s extreme but if someone doesn’t know whats going on or how to treat it, it can be extremely dangerous.
“They said she will have some scarring but we wont know for another 12 months how bad that’s going to be. It’s her face – for a girl of 13 that’s quite scary.”
She said Amelia was unaware she had been bitten until she woke up to pain in her cheek.
Mrs Nielsen said: “I think she probably felt something in the night and either moved or tried to brush it away and that’s why it had bitten her. She got out of bed in the morning and was scratching her face and said it really hurts.
“You could see it was swollen and could see two puncture marks where she’d been bitten. It was obvious it was a spider. I can only assume it was a false widow. Apparently normal spiders don’t do that.
“In her bedroom, as soon as we realised what happened we have put in a little device in that emits a signal to make spiders and other pests not want to go near.”
False widows are not native to Britain but are believed to have first arrived in 1879 in a crate of fruit from the Canary Islands.
Chris Hassall, a biologist at the University of Leeds who specialises in insects, said they are one of only a few spider species in this country with fangs large enough to pierce human skin and the Nielsens have been very unlucky if it was a false widow spider.
“False widows are not very common this far up north – it’s unusual to find them in your house. The nasty reaction is also rare -most bites are no worse than a bee or wasp sting, but some people have particular sensitivities.”
Mr Hassall said, while the two-wound puncture mark is characteristic of a spider bite, false widows tend not to move far from their webs and rarely come indoors.
He added: “Without having caught the spider in the act it is impossible to say what the culprit was.”
