Spider Expert gets Bitten!

A holidaying entomologist yesterday joined his wife on the list of funnel-web spider bite victims when a critter nibbled on his thigh as he tried to put on a pair of pants. Mulbring insect expert Dr Ross Dixon spent four hours in Calvary Mater Newcastle Hospital. He was allowed to leave when toxicologists were certain he was not showing any signs that venom had entered his blood.

It ended an eventful morning for the 58-year-old, who felt a sharp pain on his left thigh when he was trying to put on a pair of pants he had used to garden in the previous day at the family's Hawks Nest holiday home. "I realised it wasn't an ant biting me," Dr Dixon said. "I dropped my pants on the floor and there was a very, very large male funnel-web on the floor next to the pants." Dr Dixon stayed calm and caught the spider so it could be identified.

When the Hunter Westpac rescue helicopter arrived to take him for possible antivenom treatment, the spider hitched a ride. It is the third known funnel-web spider bite in NSW in a week, and the second in the Hunter in four days. A person needed antivenom at Wyong Hospital after they were bitten at Lake Macquarie on New Year's Eve. It also comes a couple of years after Dr Dixon's wife, Julia, was bitten by a funnel-web spider at Blackalls Park.

"We spend a lot of time outdoors so we have come across them from time to time," Dr Dixon said. Clinical toxicologist Dr Geoff Isbister said the Hunter and Central Coast were hot spots for funnel-web spiders, especially in summer. There were 40 species of funnel-webs, but it was difficult to tell which species yesterday's culprit belonged to. Dr Isbister said although there had not been a death attributed to funnel-web spiders since the introduction of antivenom in 1980, the side effects were dangerous and the chance of death was real. "The best advice is that they are big black spiders, so if you get bitten by a big, black spider then you should get immediate first aid treatment," he said. *SMH