23-foot python swallows woman whole in Indonesia

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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