A Texas woman was attacked by a hawk and a snake at the same time after the bird accidentally dropped the wriggling serpent on her. 64-year-old Peggy Jones was mowing her lawn last month when a passing hawk dropped a snake on her before swooping down to angrily try to reclaim its meal.
The snake wrapped itself around her arm and began striking her face as the bird sunk its talons deep into her flesh. The terrifying ordeal left her with cuts and bruising to her arm and face. The bizarre incident took place last month in the town of Silsbee, Texas, near the Louisiana border.
It began after a snake suddenly fell out of the sky and landed on her. Before she could remove it, the hawk attack began. "As I was trying to sling my arm and sling the snake off, the snake wrapped around my arm," she told CBS News. "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."
She realized it must have been dropped by a passing bird, since she was not standing under trees when it happened. Her assumption was quickly confirmed when the hawk swooped down and joined in the melee. "Then the hawk appeared just as fast as the snake appeared," Jones said. "The hawk grabbed the snake that was wrapped around my arm and pulled it like he was going to carry it away. And when he did, it flung my arm up. The hawk was carrying my arm and the snake with it."
The hawk struggled to remove the snake from Jones' body, stabbing her with its talons repeatedly as it attempted to snatch back its food. Jones was in the back of the property, while her husband was out front. She tried to scream for help, and then she started screaming for Jesus. "I was screaming, 'Please Jesus, just help me,'" she said tearfully.
The hawk couldn't immediately get the snake detangled from Jones' arm, she said. It swooped in about four times, its wings flapping around her, causing a bloody brawl. Finally, the snake was released from her arm, and Jones says she ran toward her husband, "hysterical" and covered in blood. Her forearm had been ripped up by the hawk's talons. Once she reached him, he couldn't comprehend what she was trying to tell him, she said. He drove her to the hospital, where she was treated for puncture wounds, cuts, abrasions, scratches and severe bruising.
Jones said she was given antibiotics and, because they were unsure at first if the snake was venomous, she stayed up all night monitoring her wounds. "Not that I could've slept anyway," she said, adding that she doesn't think the snake bit her and remains unsure what kind of snake it was.Jones described the attack as severely traumatic, adding that she thought she was going to die and has had trouble sleeping since it happened.
She said that living in rural Texas, she is no stranger to wildlife encounters. "I've actually seen a hawk pick up a snake. That's something they do, that's how they kill their prey," she said. But now, she says, its something that she will always keep in mind.
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