A camper says he was bitten on his head while he slept by Britain’s only venomous snake when he left the entrance to his tent open as he slept.
Tony Mohammed and wife Karina Taukule, 39, had gone camping in Suffolk to escape the heat in their home in Coventry.
To allow a cool breeze into the tent, she suggested leaving the door open, and in the middle of the night Tony felt a burning sensation... but brushed it off and went back to sleep.
The next day, he found disturbing clear liquid streaming down his face and eventually went to a walk-in centre who cleaned the wound and gave him antibiotics.
Days later, when the scab fell off, he was shocked to find fang marks on his scalp which he believes came from an adder he disturbed in the night.
Tony, 56, said: “When I saw the puncture marks I thought straight away 'that's got to be an adder'."
“We ended up at this campsite in Suffolk and because it was still hot she said 'sleep with the flysheet open tonight'.
"Against my better judgement, we left it open and a little more breeze came in. I was sleeping with my head towards the tent opening.
"At the time I thought it wasn't a good idea, I was thinking more of mosquitoes and creepy crawlies but when we opened it I was glad of the breeze as it was hot.
"In the early hours of the morning, I felt a burning on my head. I was half asleep and was rubbing it and then went back to sleep.
"My eye swelled up 24 hours later, I think people on the campsite thought I'd been in a fight.
"The skin now still has a different texture to the rest of the skin.
"It could have even been an escaped exotic [snake], who knows?”
Over the course of the next 24 hours, Tony said he felt ill but perked up when the wound scabbed over.
He added: “I thought 'I've got to go to a walk-in centre' so I went to one. The guy said it's probably a false widow spider bite.
"The doctor said, with gravity, it was going to look like I'd had a stroke. As the liquid went down my face, that's when my eye came up.
"He gave me antibiotics and antihistamine cream and sent me on my way.
"A week later he called me asking if I was ok. I explained I'd discovered those two puncture marks and he said 'oh it's not a spider then' but didn't say what it was.
"The funny thing is in May we went to Zanzibar, the only thing we got was a couple of mosquito bites.
"We were in West Africa and nothing happened. [We go camping in the UK] and that happened."
