A massive python killed a woman in Indonesia, the second time in just
over a year one of the giant constrictors swallowed a human in adjacent
provinces in that country.
The woman, 54-year-old Wa Tiba, went missing while checking her
vegetable garden near her village on Muna island in Southeast Sulawesi
province on Thursday evening, said the chief of the village of Persiapan
Lawela, Faris, who uses a single name.
Wa Tiba was concerned about wild boars getting into her corn, planted about a half-mile from her house.
When she hadn’t returned by sunrise Friday, her sister went to look for
her. She found only Tiba’s footprints, her flashlight, her machete and
slippers.
Her family and nearly 100 other villagers mounted a search, and
discovered a 23-foot-long reticulated python about 150 feet away from
her belongings. The snake was so bloated it could barely move.
The villagers killed it.
“When they cut open the snake’s belly they found Tiba’s body still
intact with all her clothes,” Faris said. “She was swallowed first from
her head.”
Videos posted on some websites showed villagers slicing open the
python’s carcass with a machete to reveal the woman’s lifeless corpse.
Faris said the woman’s garden, about half a mile from her house, is
located in a rocky area with caves and cliffs believed to contain many
snakes.
Wa Tiba was probably killed before she was swallowed. Pythons typically
grab onto their prey with dozens of sharp curved teeth and then squeeze
it to death before swallowing it whole.
Reports of humans being killed by pythons are extremely rare. The snakes
generally eat monkeys, pigs and other mammals. Attacks on humans are
supposed to be as rare as winning the lottery and being struck by
lightning at the same time, according to the Washington Post report.
But a similar attack on a human took place on another Indonesian island
in March 2017, when a 25-year-old man was swallowed whole by a python in
West Sulawesi province.
Reticulated pythons, the longest snakes in the world, are common in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia.
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