Editor's note: Story contains graphic images
Mowing your lawn is generally considered to be a pretty safe chore, but one Texas woman had an insane experience trying to complete the task last week: Peggy Jones, a resident of Silsbee, Texas, was out mowing her lawn on a tractor, when "out of the sky, out of the clear blue, a snake fell onto my arm," she told KPRC-TV. Jones tried to remove the snake, but it continued to tighten around her arm, constricting it.
Taking defensive measures, likely due to the disorientation, the snake began striking at the woman and hit her glasses.
As Jones continued trying to knock the stuck snake off of her arm, another fighter stepped into the ring, this one a red-tailed hawk, which, presumably had been flying overhead with the snake when it dropped it onto Jones.
The hawk wanted the snake off her arm about as much as she did. It swooped down and began clawing at the snake—and her arm—over and over, the victim said.
"I just kept saying, 'Help me, Jesus. Help me, Jesus,'" she said. Jones told KPRC that the hawk dove down four times before successfully ripping the snake off her arm.
Jones said, "Finally he got the snake and took off with the snake."
When she looked down, she saw that she was "covered in blood" and her arm was "pretty tore up." Her glasses' lenses also had venom all over them (thankful that she was wearing them!).
Her husband came running when he heard the scuffle. "I was yelling and screaming. He didn't know what I was saying. I thought I was bit by a snake."
KPRC
He took Jones to the emergency room, where she was monitored for a snakebite, just in case, even though there was no evidence of one. The medical staff also treated her scratches from the hawk and bruises from the snake. Jones and her husband are unsure what kind of venomous snake it was, though they believe it was most likely a rattlesnake.
While she was rattled by the simultaneous snake and hawk attack, it wasn't the first time she's gone toe to fang with a snake. She was bitten by a venomous snake a few years ago.
Jones told the outlet that many people have called her unlucky in the wake of the attack, but she doesn't agree. The hawk may have dropped the snake on her in the first place, but it also saved her life.
"I feel like the luckiest person alive to have survived this!"
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