A curious series of events occurred in Silsbee, roughly 20 miles north of Beaumont, amounting to what one wildlife expert has called a freak incident.
Peggy Jones found herself at the center of a high-flying tussle between a snake and a hawk while mowing her lawn on Tuesday, leaving her with a clawed-up arm and broken glasses.
“I was mowing on our property when out of the sky, out of the clear blue, a snake fell onto my arm,” Jones recounted during an interview with Houston’s NBC affiliate KPRC.
The snake didn’t just sit still, she said. It proceeded to wrap around her arm and tighten its grip. It even tried to strike her face, breaking her glasses.
As if this wasn’t alarming enough, a hawk then entered the scene.
In what seemed to be an attempt to reclaim its prey, the hawk began to dive down repeatedly, trying to snatch the snake from Jones’ arm. With each swoop, the hawk clawed at her, understandably causing her some distress.
“The snake was squeezing so hard, and I was waving my arms in the air,” Jones explained. “I just kept saying, ‘Help me, Jesus, Help me, Jesus.’”
Eventually, the hawk managed to snatch the snake off of Jones’ arm, which was bruised by the snake’s constrictions and torn up badly by the bird’s sharp talons. She promptly went to a nearby hospital, where staff could not believe the incredible story.
“I feel like the luckiest person alive to have survived this!” Jones said, further remarking that she had once survived a poisonous snake bite.
Upon hearing Jones’ story, Bryan Hughes, a specialist from Rattlesnake Solutions, suggested that the hawk had probably caught the snake before but dropped it mid-flight.
“It fell on the woman and hung onto her because this was a panicked, injured animal,” Hughes told Insider. “Then the bird swept down to finish what it started.”
“This is not something that people need to start worrying about,” Hughes added. “It is such a freak incident.”
Hughes further suggested that the snake itself was a rat snake, a species prevalent in the Texas region and known for being constrictors.
There have been several unfortunate wildlife encounters this year.
For instance, as reported in The Dallas Express, three women tubing on a Montana river were recently attacked by an otter. All three sustained biting injuries, while one had to be flown by helicopter to a hospital for treatment.
