Scolopendra sp. "Chinese Tiger Leg"

[Draiman]

This was NOT an induced bite.

Got bitten about 15 minutes ago by a 16cm adult female, while I was removing her pedelings from the enclosure. Tagged on the fleshy side (inside) of my right index finger. Immediate pain and swelling, and a LOT of bone pain - my finger bones are hurting, wrist bones are hurting; even my forearm. A red rash has also developed on my right forearm. Lymph node in right armpit swollen. Mobility in the bitten finger virtually non-existent now. Will update.

update: swelling on the finger seems to have increased. Rashes on forearm still present, some boneache in my hand and wrist still present.

update2: some pain in my elbow now. the rash on my forearm has disappeared, swelling and redness on the bitten finger and surrounding area is also beginning to subside.

update3 (close to 2 hours post-bite): almost all pain and swelling has now subsided. Interestingly, the bite from the 4cm S. alternans pedeling gave me a lot more crap than this - more pain and for a much longer duration.

update4: Now this is odd. It's been about 20 hours post-bite now, and I've just got up from bed to find that the bitten finger has literally ballooned overnight. It's strange, because the finger is hugely swollen but there is little to no pain at all.

 

[Draiman]

It has been 3 days since the bite, and the bitten finger is, strangely, still very swollen (despite there being no pain whatsoever).

 

[Draiman]

I would just like to add in retrospect that the swelling from this bite was very similar to what I got recently from the S. hardwickei bite - severe swelling for days after the bite (in the hardwickei case, up to 7 days post bite). I have not experienced this from any Scolopendra species other than these two, and I have been bitten by, among others, S. subspinipes mutilans, S. multidens, and S. alternans.

 

[ScarecrowGirl]

Chinese Giant Tiger Leg bite

I will start off with ouch.



Thats an older picture of him after a shed but this is the pede that bit me.

It was about 10:30 and I was going to feed another pede, but I opened up the wrong box and he flew out and in to the laundry basket. I probably scared him some more by digging in the basket, I saw him sticking out of a dirty sock and as I was folding it out he flipped back and tagged my index finger. So I just threw him and the sock back in his box.

I skulked around the house looking for a bandaid, because for a little hole, it bled and bled and bled, after about the first five minutes the swelling became visible in my finger. It hurt a little bit, but at the time though, there were a tone of little tiny cuts all over my hand from cleaning a satanic scrub brush at work that day, being stretched by the swelling. That hurt worse than anything for a while. Below is a crappy pic taken with my left hand at 10:37.



About a half hour later the swelling actually split two small cuts, making them both bleed for a while. The bit itself also stopped bleeding at this point. I was chatting with some one online

"It hurts like a ***, ontop of all the little cuts,
this isnt mild, and the swelling is still spreading
But I can still say I've had worse"



Snipit from chat>>

"the swelling has spread almost all the way across my hand and the bases of three fingers are swolen now too,
my thumb feels really cold an i can bearly move my hand. Im also shivering
Sent at 11:39 PM on Friday



at this point i was sitting still and hoping not to trigger any more pain.



I got up to take a shower to ease the pain but that made thing SO much worse!
"I moved, and now every thing sucks, and the swelling doubled along with alot of the pain."

 

[ScarecrowGirl]

CONTINUED

Here are the notes I made on the computer afterwards

12;42 am
after moving aroud, just walking and such, pain and swelling increased. Shoulder is extra achey.took a shower, hot and cold water feel nice, but pain get worse, even more so after te shower with swelling reaching all the way across my hand, my wrist hurts to move, pinki knuckle hurts the worst.


12;47am
pain shooting up and thouugh hand and finger, much stronger pain now, hurting pain now.

12;53am
must be time for some seriouse pain

1;10am
lots of pain, pretty bad, any movement and air disturbance makes it worse, shivering pretty bad, swelling has gone down though, some movement back in fingers.

1;24am
hurt and pain, pretty bad. wrist really hurts, whole hand really hurts.



8;18 am
not going in to work, cant hardly move my hand, movment causing pain in hand and arm, whole are is locked up

9;18 am
hand hurts pretty bad, my elbow and shoulder ache badly, swelling is down, cant touch index finger to thumb, back of the hand and knuckles hurt the worst right now.

Noonish
Pain triggered by moving hand, other wise I can touch my index to my thumb again.

5;37 pm
Heavy labor triggers heavy swelling and mild pain.*

* Ha ha ha, things were going well untill I went with my Boyfriends mom to pick out some fig trees. I carried and moved several trees that were in 10 gallon pots, my hand felt like it was going to explode it was so swollen by the time I was done, this pic was taken about an hour afterwards, my knuckles were all puffy too!



THE LESSON HERE

If you are going to get bit at least get bit on your non-dominant hand so that you can function the next day, Oh and you know, avoid getting bit in the first place.

 

[ScarecrowGirl]

A week later.

Friday the bite mark got really itchy, I scratched at it and found that a piece of one of his maxillipeds was stuck in one of the holes. After I removed it my finger and the back of my hand swelled up a little again with some mild burning and limited mobility in my index finger.

 

[MrDeranged]

New bites from this species can be reported here.