A woman in Texas got a surprise from the sky as she was mowing her property last month.
Peggy Jones said as she was on her riding mower on her property in Silsbee, Texas, when a snake fell from the sky and wrapped itself around her right arm, according to Silsbeebee.com
Jones did not have time to react before a hawk, which apparently dropped the snake as it was flying over Jones, dove in and began trying to get the snake back.
Peggy Jones, a Texas resident, was finishing some yard work when a snake fell from the sky, wrapping itself tightly around her forearm and lunging at her face. A hawk had dropped it, and then quickly joined the fracas. https://t.co/eggVj5WjBC
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 9, 2023
The hawk clawed at the snake as the snake struck back at the hawk with Jones’ arm as the battleground.
“As I was trying to sling my arm and sling the snake off, the snake wrapped around my arm,” she said. “The snake was striking in my face, it struck my glasses a couple of times... I was slinging and slinging, he was striking and striking, and he just kept hanging on.”
Then, Jones turned to a higher power.
“I’m screaming during this whole time, ‘Help me, Jesus! Please, help me, Jesus!’” Jones, 64, said.
The hawk finally shook the snake loose from Jones’ arm but not before it had clawed her.
Jones said she drove the mower back toward her home where her husband was mowing the front of the property. Her husband, Wendell, 66, said he heard his wife “screaming hysterically” as she zigzagged toward him and flailed her bloodied arm.
Wendell drove Peggy to the hospital as she told him what happened.
“I’m thinking she’s still in hysterics,” Wendell said.
Both the snake and the hawk had done damage to her, Peggy said.
“There were puncture wounds, cuts, abrasions, scratches and severe bruising,” she said of her injuries. The snake also dented her glasses as it tried to strike her face, according to CBS News.
It wasn’t Peggy’s first run-in with a snake. Two years ago, a venomous snake had bitten Jones while she was clearing another property so they could build a house on it, The Washington Post reported.
