Woman Who Put Octopus on Her Face: 'This Was Not a Good Idea'

Jamie Bisceglia was trying to win a photo contest. Then the octopus bit her.
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 8, 2019 9:15 AM CDT

We shouldn't have to tell people not to put octopuses on their faces, but here we are. It's a fact that Jamie Bisceglia herself now acknowledges, despite having done just that last week and suffering the consequences. HuffPost reports that the Washington state woman was participating in a fishing derby Friday in the Tacoma Narrows when she realized she likely wasn't going to place in that competition. What she could win, she thought, was the photo contest that event organizers were also sponsoring, with "an opportunity for an unusual picture," as CBS 17 puts it. One of her fishing buddies had just caught an octopus, so she yanked it off the hook, planted it right on her face, and posed for the camera. Except the venomous octopus wasn't into the photo op: It suctioned on tight, then bit her twice.

"It was a really intense pain when it went inside and it just bled, dripping blood for a long time," she tells KIRO. Although Bisceglia and her friends couldn't get the cephalopod off at first—"we couldn't get the beak to dislodge, it was like a prong," she tells HuffPost—they eventually pried it off. Because she was busy at the fishing company she owns, she didn't seek medical attention for two days, but she finally gave in and went to the ER. "I'm still in pain," she tells KIRO. "I'm on three different antibiotics. "This can come and go, the swelling, for months they say." She's also learned her lesson: "This was not a good idea. I will never do it again." Bisceglia won't know if she won the photo contest, and the $100 prize, till later this week. (More strange stuff stories.)

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