BEAUMONT, Texas – A Texas woman says she feels like “the luckiest person alive” after a snake fell out of the sky and landed on her and was then attacked by a hawk.
Peggy Jones told KPRC, KSAT’s sister station in Houston, that she was on a tractor mowing her yard in Silsbee, near Beaumont, on Aug. 1 when a snake fell on her.
The snake latched itself onto her arm, she said, and then a hawk flew in and tried to rip it off.
“The snake was squeezing so hard, and I was waving my arms in the air. And then, this hawk was swooping down clawing at my arm over and over,” Jones said. “I just kept saying, ‘Help me, Jesus, Help me, Jesus.’”
Jones told The Silsbee Bee, which was the first news outlet to report the attack, that the snake also tried to strike her eyeglasses.
She said she thinks the hawk flew down on her about four times to grab the snake. It eventually ripped the snake off and flew away with it.
Her husband heard the commotion and ran to help her, she said.
“I was yelling and screaming,” she said. “He didn’t know what I was saying. I thought I was bit by a snake.”
Her husband took her to the hospital, where she was treated for cuts. She also had bruising from the snake squeezing her arm, she said.
While there was blood and snake venom everywhere, the woman is going to be okay.
“I feel like the luckiest person alive to have survived this,” she said.
KPRC reported that this is Jones’ second dangerous situation with a snake — she was bitten by a venomous snake in recent years.
The type of snake that landed on the woman is unknown. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department says there are four types of venomous snakes in Texas, coral snakes, copperheads, cottonmouths and rattlesnakes.