KEY POINTS:
If young Northland man-about-town Sam Nicholson examines the teeth of the next girl he dates, it won't be a check on her age. It will be a case of "once bitten, twice shy".
Mr Nicholson, of Maungatapere, is recovering in Whangarei Hospital after surgery for an infection caused by a woman biting him at a party.
Sitting on his hospital bed, he described how he had been amorously grappling with a woman he didn't know while drinking at his brother's home at Poroti on Friday, when she sank her teeth into his shoulder.
His cousin, Lynley Nicholson, said the woman had blood in her mouth, and Mr Nicholson said: "She almost took a chunk out of me."
Why? Mr Nicholson, 22, hopefully suggested she was "getting off on him" and Ms Nicholson joked girls were hungry these days. Two cousins of the injured man at his hospital bedside, Josephine and Mania-May Erceg, said, "Vampires!" and giggled.
Mr Nicholson apparently felt no pain because of the alcohol he had consumed and soon nodded off without treating the bite.
By Sunday the wound was "pussed up and pretty gross" and he felt ill.
Ms Nicholson took him to hospital where doctors explained there could be nasty germs in the human mouth, and Mr Nicholson was at risk of serious blood poisoning.
Surgeons gave the bite a clean-up and Mr Nicholson was pumped full of antibiotics. He later said the infection had spread to his chest, but with the bite now treated and the medicine kicking in he hoped to be discharged soon.
What about the woman biter? A few wounding words from Ms Nicholson apparently saw her off the premises, and there was a report she was "very sorry" about what had happened.
Mr Nicholson doesn't have a regular girlfriend he would have had trouble explaining the bite to, but said he would now be very careful in his quest for Miss Right.
- NORTHERN ADVOCATE
