Bangkok — A 64-year-old woman was preparing to do the evening dishes at her home outside Bangkok when she felt a sharp pain in her thigh and looked down to see a huge python taking her in his arms.
“I was going to draw water and when I sat down, it bit me immediately,” Arom Arunroj told Thai newspaper Thairath. “When I looked, I saw the snake coiling around me.”
The 13- to 16-foot-long python coiled around her torso, pressing her against her kitchen floor.
“I grabbed him by the head, but he wouldn’t let go,” she said. “He just kept tightening.”
Kunyakit Thanawtchaikun/AP
Pythons are non-venomous constrictors, which kill their prey by gradually taking away their breath.
Leaning against her kitchen door, she screamed for help, but it was only when a neighbor happened to walk by about an hour and a half later and heard her screams that the authorities were called.
Police Constable Anusorn Wongmalee told The Associated Press on Thursday that when he arrived, the woman was still leaning against her door, looking exhausted and pale, with the snake wrapped around her.
Police and animal control officers used a crowbar to hit the snake in the head until it let go and slithered away before it could be captured.
In total, Arom spent about two hours Tuesday evening in the python’s clutches before being released.
She was treated for several bites, but otherwise appeared unharmed in videos of her speaking to Thai media shortly after the incident.
Snake encounters are not uncommon in Thailand. Last year, 26 people were killed by venomous snake bites, according to government statistics. A total of 12,000 people were treated for bites from snakes and other venomous animals in 2023.
The reticulated python is the largest snake in Thailand. Its size generally varies between 1.5 and 6.4 meters and it weighs up to 75 kg. Some specimens measure up to 10 meters long and weigh 130 kg.
Small pythons feed on small mammals such as rats, but larger snakes turn to prey such as pigs, deer, and even domestic dogs and cats. Attacks on humans are not common, although they do occur occasionally.
Fatal attacks also took place in Indonesia, where a Woman found in belly of reticulated python who swallowed her whole in June — the fifth person to be devoured by one of the snakes in the country since 2017.
