Mary Coughlan is left fighting for her life after being bitten by a spider during her Australian tour.
The 62-year-old Co Galway native first noticed a bite on the end of one of her fingers in Alice Springs.
“Over the next few days it turned into a rash all over my body,” she told the Irish Sun.
Coughlan finished the rest of her tour but was seriously ill when she returned to Ireland. She was hospitalized for five days, the Daily Mail reports.
“I went to a medical centre and they told me it was most likely caused by a bite from a non- poisonous spider. I was prescribed antihistamines.”
“I thought I was dying. I was in hospital for five days with what the doctors said was blood poisoning,” she said.
The spider followed her home, stowing away in Coughlan’s luggage.
“What freaked me out was finding a spider had followed me all the way back from Australia,” she said.
Coughlan said that after she unpacked her luggage following her hospital sty, she spotted the spider crawling on to the floor.
“We had no idea what sort of spider it was but my son-in-law killed it. It freaked me out that the spider that bit me could have followed me home from Australia.”
“My daughter was sure it was the spider that did the damage but you can’t be sure. It’s just a lesson to be careful not to bring back little bugs from abroad.”
“I was lucky but they have lots of things that can kill you out in Australia.”
The singer is now fully recovered.
I’m glad Mary Coughlan has recovered, but she wasn’t bitten by the animal in the photograph, or any of its relatives. That is not a spider. That is a marine animal called a pycnogonid. The clue is in the fact that it has 10 legs; spiders have 8. Pycnogonids are called ‘sea-spiders’ because of their general appearance (they certainly fooled you) but they are not related to spiders. They are a different animal group. Sorry.