Cobra wins fight for chair...
2007-01-25 23:19
Nelspruit - John Douglas isn't the only one who likes his comfy chair.
When he plonked himself into it on Thursday, he disturbed a poisonous Mozambique spitting cobra that had been snoozing under a flap on the armrest.
It promptly bit him on the hip.
"As I sat down, so I shot up again. The power of the strike was incredible," said Douglas, 69, who lived in Steiltes in Nelspruit.
Douglas has spent two stints in hospital since being bitten on January 13 and was discharged earlier this week after an operation.
"It was a helluva shock and the bite was most painful.
Left snake in the chair
"I told my wife, Annemie, that I thought that I had been bitten by a snake and the two of us looked in the chair and opened the flaps (on the armrests), but we couldn't find it."
Douglas then went to have a shower and found two black bite marks on his hip.
He went back to the chair and found the snake under the right flap.
"It was about a metre long. We left it right there - we're not heroes - and went straight to Nelspruit Private Hospital," he said.
A surgeon on duty wanted to know what type of snake it was, so his wife called her brother and he alerted the fire brigade.
The fire brigade had a unit in the area. They caught the snake using braai tongs, popped it into a pillowcase and took it to the hospital.
"The doctor told me it was a Mozambique spitting cobra and that it's venom is neurotoxic and can induce paralysis," said Douglas.
He spent three days in hospital on antibiotics and painkillers before being discharged last Wednesday.
But, the wound flared up at the weekend and he was readmitted for surgery to remove the dead tissue.
"Our property is on a nature reserve, but this is the first time we've seen a snake in the house in the 17 years we've been here," said Douglas.
Has been teased relentlessly
The snake was later released back into the wild, "but not near our home"
A former president of the local golf club, Douglas said his friends had been teasing him relentlessly about his run-in with the snake.
"They even made an announcement saying 'the bad news is that John Douglas has been bitten by a cobra and the good news is the cobra survived'."