A mother and her daughter are lucky to be alive after being attacked by a deadly cobra in their home.
According to the Daily Mail, 6-year-old Mikayla Grove of Ballito, South Africa had been sleeping in her room in January when she rolled over onto a Mozambique spitting cobra that had slithered onto her pillow sometime that night. The snake bit her under the chin, and upon hearing her cries, her mother, Inge Grove, rushed to the room, not knowing that a deadly snake was there. The snake spit venom into Inge Grove’s eyes, but she was able to grab Mikayla and hide in the bathroom.
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“My wife grabbed Mikayla and rushed to the bathroom next to the girls’ room. Mikayla’s big sister Bella got out of bed and switched on the light just as I came to the room and saw the snake lying on Mikayla’s pillow but thank goodness she was not attacked,” said Ludwig Grove, Mikayla’s father.
After realizing that their daughter had been bitten, and after rinsing Grove’s eyes with water, the couple rushed to a nearby hospital, calling a close friend, who is a neonatal nurse at Netcare Alberlito Hospital, and asking them to alert the emergency department of what had happened. When the family arrived, the emergency team already had an anti-venom specialist on the way.
While doctors were quickly able to assess Grove and ensure that her sight would be okay, Mikayla’s ordeal was much more extensive. The child was vomiting and her face had begun to swell by the time they reached the hospital, prompting doctors to intubate her to secure her airway. She had to be given 17 vials of anti-venom in order to save her life.
The 6-year-old was transferred to the pediatric ward after four days. She suffered skin and tissue loss on her cheek and neck and will have to undergo further treatment to give structure and volume back to the affected area. She isn’t mad at the snake, though.
“Mikayla was glad to hear that the snake that bit her was not killed but was released back into the wild and she even decided to name the snake and called it ‘Pearl,” her father said.
The Mozambique spitting cobra is the second deadliest snake in Africa and can grow up to five feet. Their venom, which they can spit as far as eight feet, can cause damage to the soft tissues, including swelling and necrosis, which leads to the death of cells.
