Nutty" Natie Swart's world record attempt is over. His dream of breaking the world record for the amount of time spent in an enclosure with 40 venomous snakes was dashed on Friday night 22 January 2010 when he was bitten by a puff adder. This is the third time Natie has been bitten since entering the enclosure last year. But Natie seems to have taken this bite in his stride. When the Pretoria News visited him last night at Kalafong Hospital, he was sitting outside his ward smoking a cigarette. "I was bitten three times on my lower arm," he said, displaying the small bite marks. "It happens. What can I say? It is not the fault of the snake, he was only protecting himself." He said it had felt at the time as if his arm had been dipped into boiling oil. Natie said he had been watching a DVD around midnight on Friday. "I put my hand behind my head and I was instantly zapped three times. I never saw or heard the snake, which was curling up on my pillow. It should have been lethal. It was my 30th snake bite and my third while I had been in the cage. But it is fine. I might even go home on Monday." Natie said jokingly that the right side of his body is his unlucky side, as all three snake bites he suffered while he was inside the cage were on that side of his body. "I am disappointed not to finish my stint inside the cage, but I think it is over. I cannot return. Three times lucky, but maybe I will not be so lucky the fourth time." "Apart from my pets - a few mambas, a boomslang and a cobra - I don't think I will come in close contact with other snakes for the rest of this year," he said. "My body needs to rest." Hennie Jonk, co-owner of the Chameleon Village Reptile and Conservation Park at Hartbeespoort Dam, where Natie was attempting to break the world record, said: "Natie did not notice that a puff adder was on his bed, and he did not see it crawl under his pillow. Then when Natie put his arm under the pillow, he was bitten by the snake." Natie phoned the staff member on duty at the park, who then alerted Jonk. Natie was rushed to hospital, where he remained in intensive care until on Sunday morning. While the bite on his arm is not as bad as the one he received on his foot last year, which almost cost him a toe, "he will carry the scar for the rest of his life", said Jonk. After the latest incident, the three directors at the park decided to call off the world record attempt. Natie was in the enclosure with 40 venomous snakes for a total of 93 days.