Woman, 64, Describes Her 2-Hour Struggle With a 13-Foot Python

A 64-year-old woman in Thailand recalled to The Guardian her horrifying struggle with a 13-foot snake that was trying to eat her alive.

Arrom Arunroj, who lives in Samut Prakan, was busy cleaning her dinner dishes when she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her right thigh. Thinking she had been bitten by a monitor lizard, Arunroj reach down to slap it away only to find a 13-foot python wrapping itself around her body.

Arunroj accidentally fell to the ground in panic as the 45-pound snake tightened around her torso. The widow, who works as a cleaner at a children’s hospital in Bangkok, struggled with the snake for more than two hours before neighbors heard her screams and summoned authorities. When she was found, Arunroj’s arms had gone pale from lack of circulation and she had multiple puncture wounds on her leg from where the python latched onto her. Rescuers rushed her to a local hospital for treatment.

“I didn't notice the snake until it had bit me. I looked down and it was coiling around my leg,” Arunroj recalled. “I was scared that the python would kill me, so I screamed at the top of my lungs until a passer-by heard me. I have never been so terrified in my life.”

It took authorities more than 30 minutes to pry the snake off of Arunroj. After they freed her, they made the humane but rather terrifying decision to once again let the snake loose in the woods behind the apartment complex.

Although pythons are common in Thailand, it’s rare for them to attack humans. They nominally eat primates such as monkeys and orangutans. However, when they do turn their attention to larger mammals, as in the 2017 case of an Indonesian farmer swallowed whole by a 23-foot reticulated python, the snakes can typically cut off circulation within seconds and bring death within a few minutes. They then swallow their prey whole, which takes under an hour in most cases.

The fact that she lasted hours against a beast which usually claims its victims within mere moments was not lost on Arunroj. “The snake just would not let go of me. I'm sure it was waiting for me to die so it could eat me,” she said. “So I just prayed and did my best to stay alive.”

Last month, a man living in the same province as Arunroj survived a python bite to his testicle as he sat on a toilet in his home. The man was able to summon a neighbor, who helped him to contain the snake.