While tending to her lawn in Silsbee, Texas, 64-year-old Peggy Jones experienced a startling double attack. A hawk, mistaking its trajectory, accidentally dropped its snake prey onto Peggy. As she tried to fend off the snake, which had curled around her arm and started to bite her face, the hawk descended, determined to retrieve its dinner, digging its claws into her.
This unusual and alarming episode, which took place on July 25th near the Louisiana border, resulted in Peggy sustaining injuries to her face and arm. The entire chaos was triggered when a snake unexpectedly plummeted from the skies, immediately followed by the aggressive hawk.”
“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,” Mrs 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 Mrs. Jones’s body, stabbing her with its talons repeatedly as it attempted to snatch back its food.
Eventually, the snake was pulled from her arm, leaving her startled husband to drive her to the hospital.
“There were puncture wounds, cuts, abrasions, scratches, and severe bruising,” she said, adding that the snake’s attacks on her face damaged her glasses.
Mrs. 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 told CBS 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, it’s something that she will always keep in mind.