28 November 2023 , 15:15
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A man who watched his toe turn purple on holiday was horrified to discover a spider had laid eggs inside it.
Colin Blake, from Cramlington in Northumberland, was on a European cruise to celebrate his 35th wedding anniversary when he began to experience an itchy feeling in his toe.
He had been bitten in Marseille while having dinner with his wife, but believed that the cause of his discomfort was the new sandals he was wearing.
When he woke up next day with a purple and swollen toe, he decided to go to the cruise ship's doctor to find out what was wrong - where he found out the shocking truth behind his pain.
Medics decided to cut the skin on his big toe open with a scalpel, and removed a large amount of pus and unusual foreign objects which resembled tea leaves inside. They were in fact eggs laid by a wold spider, a species native to Peru which is now found in the south of France after arriving on cargo ships. The spider had numbed his toe with its bite before it laid eggs inside, meaning he did not notice the gruesome goings-on.
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When he got back to the UK, Colin was given hospital treatment, as well as a course of antibiotics. His swelling went down, and the spider's fang marks could be clearly seen on the surface of his skin, as well as where the toxin had infected his toe. His toe then took on a yellowy appearance as it started to heal.
But four weeks later, he once again discovered a strange "foreign object" in his toe. It turned out one of the spiders had now hatched, and was trying to find its way of his body. He told BBC Radio Scotland: "One of the spider eggs hadn't been flushed and must have hatched. They believe the spider was making its way out - eating its way out of my toe." A final course of antibiotics killed off the creepy crawly, and doctors removed it by cutting open his toe - putting an end to his bizarre encounter with the wolf spider family.
Last month, a woman from the US told how she was left "traumatised" when a tickle she felt in her ear turned out to be a living spider. Desirae Kelly, 29, woke up in the early hours of the morning after feeling a ticker in her ear. She assumed it was her hair or a tassel from her duvet and turned over and attempted to go back to sleep - but ended up having to have the invading arachnid flushed out of her ear in hospital.