Magda Botha, Haywood's daughter, said they were relaxing in the lounge when her mother said: "What's pricking me like that?"

A grandmother from Boksburg on the East Rand is being treated in a Pretoria hospital after she was bitten by a Mozambican spitting cobra on a farm near Bela-Bela.

Sannie Haywood, 78, was bitten on the big toe of her right foot, at her daughter's house, and is currently in the high care ward of the Muelmed Hospital.

Magda Botha, Haywood's daughter, told Beeld newspaper that they were relaxing in the lounge when her mother said: "What's pricking me like that?"

Then Botha saw a snake slither past the couch and her husband jumped up and killed it with a spade.

"We all got a big fright, and none of us realised at that stage that my mom had been bitten."

Haywood was rushed to hospital in Pretoria, where she underwent surgery. Mozambican spitting cobras have cytotoxic venom, which destroys both cells and tissue.

According to Botha, dead tissue had to be cut out of her mother's toe.

She is in a stable condition and is expected to be discharged from hospital in a week.