As she chopped up a stingray for fishing bait, a Mahia woman could never have imagined the dead creature would exact a painful and venomous revenge.
"I killed it on the Thursday and it got me on the bloody Friday," she said.
From her hospital bed yesterday, the woman, in
her late 40s, said she regretted leaving two barbed tails on the seat of her boat.
She recalls at the time thinking of Steve Irwin, the Australian wildlife celebrity killed by such a tail, and feeling sorry for him, but thinking no more of the discarded pieces. That was until one became stuck in her leg.
While fishing with her partner off Kinikini Point, near Mahia, on Friday, she brushed past one and next thing she knew she was having trouble standing.
The tail ended up in her upper thigh, swinging there while she helped pull in the remaining crayfish pots.
The couple also had nets with other fish that needed to be pulled in. "When you're out there fishing you're in a hurry to sort it out," she said.
Though she tried to squeeze the area to dull the pain, by the time they had "high-tailed it" to shore, about 20 minutes away, she was in need of serious pain relief.
"It's like a bee sting. Like a burning sensation that just kept going.
"I tried to rip it out and I couldn't.
"I was hanging on, I couldn't sit down. I was lucky there was only a small [sea] swell.
'I had to calm my partner down. He was freaking."
Her partner lifted her into their truck and drove her to the nearest house.
By chance, the couple who lived there were ambulance officers.
They could not remove the barb, so as much of the tail as possible was cut off and she was airlifted to hospital where the venomous stinger was removed.
Lowe Corporation Rescue Helicopter pilot Dean Herrick said although stingray stings were not an uncommon call-out, it had been the first time for him that the tail was not attached to the fish.
As far as the woman was concerned, "it wasn't the one that got away. It just bit me back".
