'I got bitten by UK's most dangerous spider - it left my flesh rotting away'
One Brit was left in agony, their flesh rotting away, after they were bitten by the UK’s most dangerous spider.
Jason Missey was moving wood in his garden in Broadstairs, Kent, when he felt something like a sting. But the Brit dismissed it as “nothing you’d worry about”, assuming it was a horse fly bite or something similar. However, he couldn’t have been further from the truth and within a matter of hours it began swelling, then spewing pus before bits of skin began coming off.
The 50-year-old had to be taken to hospital and graphically described how “over six weeks I had to pull my finger apart basically”.
The spider Jason found in his back garden that he thinks was a noble false window (Credit: Jason Missey/Pen News)
The bite soon began to swell after he had initially dismissed it as a fly bite (Credit: Jason Missey/Pen News)He said: “We get horse flies down here and things like that, so it felt like that sort of thing. Nothing you’d worry about. It looked literally like a horse-fly bite to start with, with a bit of swelling around it. And then as it went on, it got a bit worse, and a bit worse, and worse – and then swelling, pus, skin coming off… I ended up going to hospital, and over six weeks I had to pull my finger apart basically.”
Doctors identified Jason’s injury as a spider bite, and the 50-year-old recalls flicking away a spider at the time of the "sting". He believes it was a noble false widow, and has photographed a specimen in his garden.
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The species is “widely regarded as the most dangerous spider breeding in Britain,” according to a 2020 paper by Clive Hambler, an Oxford University zoologist. Gruesome images and videos taken by Jason show how the spider’s venom started to kill his flesh. At first, the damage is limited to an angry red spot on his finger. But before long, his top layer of skin is gone, leaving an open wound oozing pus in its place.
Soon the bite was oozing pus and eventually bits of skin began to fall off (Credit: Jason Missey/Pen News)
Jason had to spend several weeks taking it easy at work (Credit: Jason Missey/Pen News)Asked to rate the pain out of 10, Jason said 11. “You have to just let it rot away to start with to be honest,” he said. “Every two days you could take the dressing off, and then you had to pull dead parts off by yourself. It was painful. When it was down to virtually the tendons and the muscle, when you’ve got tweezers on bits, pulling things that aren’t supposed to be pulled, it was very painful. I’ve got a big pain threshold but it was bad; very bad.”
Jason, who runs a construction firm with his dad, had to spend several weeks on light duties as he waited for his finger to heal. And though he doesn’t want people to be scared of spiders on the whole, he says people should familiarise themselves with the noble false widow’s appearance,
Jason said the pain he felt following the bite was off the scale (Credit: Jason Missey/Pen News)“I don’t want people attacking nature because of one type of spider,” he said. “Just go online and look at what they look like. We have loads down here and I’m always wary now. I now know what I’m looking for.”
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