A Washington State woman trying to take a memorable photo was bitten by an octopus after putting the animal on her face. Jamie Bisceglia said the sea creature felt “squishy” and “fun” at first, but the picture she was taking for the Tacoma fishing derby photo contest ended up being a painful one, the CBC reports.
At first, all went well.
Talking to “As It Happens” guest host Piya Chattopadhyay, Bisceglia said at first, the octopus simply felt its way around her face. However, that soon changed, leaving her in a lot of pain.
“The suckers weren’t, like, strong. They just kind of crept all over my face and my nose and my ears,” she recalled.
“When its beak entered my chin, it was the most intense pain. It felt like … a barbed hook. If I tried to release it off my face, I knew I was going to tear skin or flesh away.”
Ouch!
She managed to get the octopus off her face, thankfully.
When it loosened its grip on her skin, she pulled it off quickly before she could be bitten again.
Jamie Bisceglia was left with a heavily bleeding wound, but she played it down so as not to cause a scene and continued with the fishing event.
“I’m a strong-willed woman. I’m by myself on a boat. I’ve got five guys watching me, so I try not to act like anything major is going on,” she said.
“I grab my towel as it’s bleeding and I just keep it held to my face and go on with fishing in the derby.”
In fact, she kept fishing all that day and into the next afternoon.
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The venom from the octopus had a serious effect.
A couple of days after the bite when she finally went home, she woke up with her face severely swollen.
“My eyes were swollen, I couldn’t see very well out of my left side, my glands were completely swollen, underneath my chin was a large pus pocket, and then the left side of my face was completely paralyzed,” she remembered.
Instead of freaking out, she got a quick shower, got dressed, and went to a local hospital.
“There wasn’t a second before they had me in a room because it was the rarest case they’ve ever seen. I was the hospital,” Bisceglia revealed.
She left the hospital with antibiotics and medications for the venom and believes the wound the animal left will result in a permanent scar.
Obviously, Bisceglia regrets her split-second decision now.
Putting an octopus on your face might seem like fun and games, but these are wild animals who likely won’t take kindly to being messed around with. That’s a lesson Bisceglia learned the hard way.
“I’m not here to, you know, try to make myself look good, because I know I don’t,” she “admitted. We’re human. We all make mistakes.”
However, she revealed that she didn’t re-release the octopus after the bite. In fact, she took it home and ate it!
People online weren’t happy about this, but Bisceglia has no regrets.
“I’m not here to judge anyone, and if they want to judge me, so be it. They have nothing better to do than to, you know, ridicule somebody for doing what they love to do,” she said.
“This is my passion. I fish, I hunt and I’m a forager. And we all eat, right?”
