20 September 2023 , 15:10
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A rapper has told how the UK's most dangerous spider left his leg swollen "like a balloon" in a "revenge" attack at a music studio.
Shane Parmenter, 36, from Chelmsford, was bitten by a noble false widow after he failed in a bid to squash it. Having fallen asleep in the studio, Shane whose stage name is MC Napz, woke up to a stinging sensation and the sight of a spider scurrying away.
“My mate was laughing his head off. He said ‘it's gonna come back and do ya’ and I was like ‘yeah alright’," said Shane. “We ended up both falling asleep in the studio, and I felt something in the night bite me. It felt like a bee sting. When I woke up in the morning, I felt another big sting, and then a false widow ran out of my trouser leg. Pretty much straight away it all went red, it was a bit uncomfortable.
“It got a whole lot worse. My leg swelled up like a balloon. I felt sick, I felt nauseous, I was dizzy, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat.” Following advice from the NHS 111 helpline, Shane drew around the bite with a pen so he would see if it was swelling – but his injury quickly outgrew the markings.
Shane said he felt a bite during the night (Credit: Shane Parmenter/Pen News)
He said how he started to feel sick and couldn't sleep following the bite (Credit: Shane Parmenter/Pen News)He said: “It went from a little mark on my leg, to massive – it just kept getting bigger and bigger, more swollen and swollen. You could see that it was getting infected.” At Sittingbourne Memorial Hospital, medics cleaned and dressed the wound, and gave him a course of antibiotics. “I took the pad off and it was just literally horrific: blood and big lumps of pus oozing out of my leg. It was so painful," he told of cleaning the wound, reported the Daily Star.
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The bite has also had mental health repercussions for Shane, and impacted on his work with his record label, D&B Politics. “It was really hard to cope with,” he said. “Not being able to go to work and not being able to do my side-job, or even sit at my laptop and do my promotions and release some music.
"I've got my own studio so I like to get really creative in the studio, but I couldn't think straight. It's made me a bit shook of spiders. I wasn't scared of spiders before but I definitely damn well am now.” The noble false widow is “widely regarded as the most dangerous spider breeding in Britain,” according to a 2020 paper by Clive Hambler, an Oxford University zoologist. But they’re unlikely to attack unless provoked or trapped between clothes and skin.
Shane warned other people: “They're the sort of spider that if you just leave them alone, they will not even bother you. My advice to other people would be: if you find a false widow in your house, leave it.”
* This article was crafted with the help of an AI tool, which speeds up The Mirror's editorial research. An editor reviewed this content before it was published. You can report any errors to [email protected]