Python squeezes Thai woman for two hours in her kitchen before being rescued by police

Bangkok — A 64-year-old woman was preparing to wash the dishes in her home outside Bangkok one evening when she felt a sharp pain in her thigh and looked down to see a huge python grabbed her.

“I was just about to get some water and when I sat down, it immediately bit me,” Arom Arunroj told the Thai newspaper Thairath. “When I looked, I saw the snake coiled around me.”

The four to five meter long python wrapped itself around her upper body and pushed her to the floor of her kitchen.

“I grabbed it by the head, but it wouldn't let go,” she said. “It just contracted.”

Pythons are non-venomous constrictors that kill their prey by gradually squeezing the air out of it.

Leaning against the kitchen door, she screamed for help, but it was only a neighbor who happened to pass by about an hour and a half later and heard her screams who called the police.

Police officer Anusorn Wongmalee, who answered the call, told the Associated Press on Thursday that when he arrived, the woman was still leaning against her door, exhausted and pale, with the snake wrapped around her.

Police and animal control officers used a crowbar to hit the snake on the head until it released its grip and slid away before it could be caught.

In total, Arom spent about two hours in the python's clutches on the night of Tuesday to Sunday before he was freed.

She was treated for multiple bites but appeared otherwise unharmed in videos of her speaking to Thai media shortly after the incident.

Encounters with snakes are not uncommon in Thailand. According to government statistics, 26 people died from poisonous snake bites last year. A total of 12,000 people were treated for poisonous snake bites and other animals in 2023.

The reticulated python is the largest snake found in Thailand. It is usually 1.5 to 6.4 metres long and weighs up to 75 kilograms. Specimens have been found that were up to 10 metres long and weighed 129 kilograms.

Smaller pythons feed on small mammals such as rats, while larger snakes prey on pigs, deer, and even domestic dogs and cats. Attacks on people are not common, but do occur occasionally.

There were also deadly attacks in Indonesia. Woman was found in the belly of a reticulated python which swallowed her whole in June – she is the fifth person to be swallowed by one of the snakes in the country since 2017.