A 64-year-old woman was remembered in Thailand Protector His terrifying fight with a 4-meter snake that tried to eat him alive.
Arrom Arunroj, who lives in Samut Prakan, was busy clearing away dinner plates when he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his right thigh. Thinking he had been bitten by a monitor lizard, Arunroj reached out to shoo it away only to find a 13ft python wrapped around his body.
Arunroj accidentally fell to the ground in panic when the 45kg snake clamped down on her body. The widow, who works as a cleaner at a children's hospital in Bangkok, fought the snake for more than two hours before neighbours heard her screams and called the authorities. When she was found, Arunroj's arms were pale from lack of circulation and she had multiple puncture wounds on her leg from where the python had attached itself to her. Rescuers took her to a local hospital for treatment.
“I didn’t notice the snake until it bit me. I looked down and it had wrapped itself around my leg,” recalls Arunroj. “I was scared the python was going to kill me, so I shouted at the top of my lungs until a passerby heard me. I have never been so scared in my life.”
It took the authorities more than 30 minutes to tear the snake away from Arunroj. After releasing it, they made the humane but rather frightening decision to release the snake once more into the forest behind the apartment complex.
Pythons are common in Thailand, but they rarely attack humans. They nominally eat primates such as monkeys and orangutans. However, when they do turn their attention to larger mammals, as was the case in 2017 when an Indonesian farmer was swallowed whole by a 23-foot reticulated python, the snakes can often cut off circulation in seconds, leading to death within minutes. They then swallow their prey whole, which in most cases takes less than an hour.
The fact that he had held out for hours against a beast that usually took its victims in minutes did not escape Arunroj's notice. “The snake would not let me go. I am sure it was waiting for me to die so it could eat me,” he said. “So I just prayed and did my best to survive.”
Last month, a man living in the same state as Arunroj survived a python bite on his testicle while sitting on a toilet in his home. He was able to call a neighbour who helped him subdue the snake.