A python crushed a Thai woman in her kitchen for 2 hours before she was rescued by the police

Bangkok – A 64-year-old woman was preparing to wash her dinner dishes at her home outside Bangkok when she felt a sharp pain in her thigh and looked down to see a large animal. python holding him.

“I was going to fetch water and when I sat down it immediately bit me,” Arom Arunroj told Thai newspaper Thairath. “When I looked, I saw a snake coiling around me.”

The 13- to 16-foot python wrapped itself around her body, pinning her down to her kitchen floor.

“I held it in my head, it freed me,” he said. “It only got stronger.”

Pythons are non-venomous constrictors, which kill their prey by slowly suffocating it.

Leaning on the door of her kitchen, she cried for help but it wasn’t until an hour and a half later that a neighbor was walking and heard her crying until the authorities were called.

Responding police officer Anusorn Wongmalee told The Associated Press on Thursday that when they arrived the woman was still leaning against her door, looking tired and pale, with the snake coiled around her.

The police and animal control officers hit the snake on the head with a crowbar until it let go of its handle and flew away before being caught.

In all, Arom spent almost two hours on Tuesday night in the grip of the python before he was freed.

He was treated for multiple bites but appeared unharmed in his videos speaking to Thai media after the incident.

Encounters with snakes are not uncommon in Thailand, and last year 26 people died from venomous snake bites, according to government figures. 12,000 people were treated for snake and other animal bites in 2023.

The python is the largest snake found in Thailand and typically ranges in size from 5 to 21 feet, weighing up to 165 pounds. They have been found as large as 33 feet long and 287 pounds.

Small pythons eat small mammals such as mice, but large snakes prey on prey such as pigs, deer and even domestic dogs and cats. Attacks on people they are rare, although they do occur from time to time.

There was also a dangerous attack in Indonesia, where a the woman was found inside the python’s stomach which swallowed him whole in June – the fifth person to be eaten by one of the snakes in the country since 2017.