Record strange instances, odd happenings and calamities

when crunching on hard barbequed corn kernals.

Fortunately, I was able to have it repaired within a couple of hours.

Which is generally a long lived spider, not very venomous, but their bite is very painful indeed.

There I was minding my own business, drivign back from a meetings. At Fountains Circel, I suddenly spotted an ENORMOUS spider on my dirver’s side external rear view mirror.

I started shaking and all I could think of tto do was to phone my business partner and tell her.

I then devised a plan to go to DH’s business premises so that he could remove the spider from the mirror. But the spider suddenly got agitated and crawled across the mirror, then onto the window, right near my face. I was barrelling down the highway, one eye on the spider and only half an eye on the busy highway, screaming all the while.

Finally, the HUGE spider decided to move again but this time the wind caught it and it blew off the window.

-03-12 08:45

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Dangerous snakes
With everyone trying to soak up the sun whether you’re hiking or bathing, Health24 is here to keep you safe with 12 of the most venomous snakes you could come across.
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Johannesburg – A Kempton Park bookkeeper has been bitten on the face by a Mozambican spitting cobra while sleeping at a lodge in North West, it was reported on Tuesday.

A severe pain in his left eye woke Werner Bronkhorst, 25, at the Pilanesberg Game Reserve at the weekend. He heard a hissing noise and realised it was a snake, Beeld reported.

“You instinctively know it’s a snake. I felt it bite me again, on the eye, and I grabbed it and threw it to one side. I felt blood running down my face,” he told the newspaper.

He ran for help, pausing only to grab a packet of cigarettes, “because I knew I was going to need them”.

According to Bronkhorst, the snake also went after a water bottle and an empty cigarette box lying on the floor next to the bed.

“That snake wasn’t right,” he said.

According to Beeld, rangers captured the reptile and released it into the park.

Bronkhorst was admitted to the Ferncrest Hospital, in Rustenburg, where he was reportedly in a stable condition.

Professor Graham Alexander, a snake expert at the University of the Witwatersrand, said he suspected that Bronkhorst might have rolled onto the snake in his sleep, and frightened the animal.

“Snakes don’t just attack,” he said.

- SAPA

Dog ‘saved life’ of missing Polish girl Firefighters said the animal stayed with the child throughout the night
Firefighters in Poland say a small dog probably saved the life of a three-year-old who went missing from her home overnight in freezing temperatures.

The child, Julia, vanished on Friday and was found lying in marshes several kilometres from her house on Saturday morning, with the dog by her side.

She is now in hospital in western Poland, suffering from frostbite after temperatures fell to -5C (23F).

Firefighter Grzegorz Szymanski said the dog kept the child warm enough to live.

“For the whole night the animal was with the girl, it never left her. Remember, it was 5 degrees below zero and the child was wet,” he said, adding that the animal was the most important factor in the girl’s survival.
More than 200 people had searched for the child overnight. It is thought she spent hours wandering through the forest near her home in the village of Pierzwin.

Julia was found lying in marshland

Her parents had last seen the three-year-old playing in the backyard with the small black mongrel.

She was eventually discovered by firefighters after she was heard crying for her mother.

who was intrusive and insistent. I felt embarrassed and became a little imperious.

The legless ‘bladerunner’ apparently shot his girlfriend in the early hours today.

Pietermaritzburg – Precision flying by an army helicopter pilot helped save a man’s life after he was bitten by a puff adder while camping in the Drakensberg on Wednesday night.
Harro Tonsing, 57, is in a stable condition at St Anne’s Hospital in Pietermaritzburg. The correct reactions by his friends laid the foundation for his rescue after he was bitten on the foot while hiking in the uKhahlamba/Drakensberg Park.
“He is stable and doing well at the moment. He is under specialised care and receiving treatment,” said hospital spokesperson Shubnum Ismail.
Rescue team
After Tonsing was bitten, members in the group he was hiking with alerted the rangers of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. The rangers called the Mountain Club’s search and rescue team to assist about 16:30, just as the afternoon’s storm clouds started to form.
Rescue convener Gavin Raubenheimer said the mountain club then put together a combined rescue team with an Emergency Medical Rescue Services (EMRS) paramedic and three mountain club members. The team flew from Pietermaritzburg Airport by helicopter and arrived at 20:00, necessitating a difficult and dangerous night hoisting operation in a deep, closed-out valley at 2 300m altitude.
The mountaineers and paramedic were lowered near the cave in which Tonsing sheltered, and got him ready for a fast flight to Pietermaritzburg.
Raubenheimer praised the pilot, who had to dodge thunderstorms in both directions of the flight. “It was a successful operation which involved skilled flying by the SA Airforce.”
- The website sareptiles.co.za warns people who are bitten by puff adders to first move the snake away with a stick; then to call for help; and then to keep the bite victim as still as possible. Helpers must not cut or incise the bite, nor try suck the venom out.
Puff adder venom causes severe pain, swellings, haemorrhages and nausea. Death is caused by secondary effects, like kidney failure. When the patient does not die, body tissue usually dies around the bite mark.
- The Witness

I very quickly removed myself from a hotel which was dingy, dirty, and where I felt unsafe.

Length of stay: less than half an hour – the time it took to find another hotel and summons a taxi!

They refused to refund me so I have lodged a dispute with my credit card company.

The owner of the “Crown’ pub proudly announced that she left St Helena 38 years ago, by mail ship. She then inisted that we all look at a picture of said mailship in Cape Town harbour.

St Helena is visited by amailship once a month only … imagine that!