That woman’s name? Albert Einstein.
Just kidding, it’s a woman named Peggy Jones. She lives in Silsbee. That’s East Texas. Think rural Louisiana, but with a little less gravel in the voice.
From CBS News:
Jones says the freak incident happened on July 25 as she was mowing grass on the property she and her husband own in Silsbee, Texas. “Just mowing the lawn, minding my own business, out of the clear blue sky, a snake fell onto my arm,” she told CBS News. “I assumed there was a hawk carrying it because I was not anywhere near a tree.”
Another clue that the snake fell out of a bird’s beak as it was flying: A hawk swooped in next.
“As I was trying to sling my arm and sling the snake off, the snake wrapped around my arm,” she said. “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.”
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.
“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.”
Eventually, the hawk freed the snake, but not before getting a few shots in on Jones, presumably for trying to steal the food it dropped. Sounds a lot like when I drop a piece of muffin and my dog gets it in her mouth and I have to wrestle it out of there. The key differences are that in this case, Jones was not trying to eat the snake, and that when I get the muffin out, I usually don’t eat it. Also, I have never drawn blood in these entanglements. The dog has, the dog has cut up my hand (that was with the rotting squirrel), but I have never harmed the dog. Contrarily, we can assume the hawk still ate the snake.
Jones is ok. Physically, I mean. She got cut up pretty good, but she’s ok. It’s unclear if the snake is venomous, but there weren’t any of those sorts of symptoms, and a lot of the cuts were from the hawk. Mentally, I would imagine she’s got some lingering effects. If I had a snake dropped on me from the sky unannounced, I would have lingering effects, and that’s without the part where the hawk attacked her and the snake both for seconds or minutes. Worst part is probably that there wasn’t any warning? That’s the kind of thing that would make me stay indoors for the rest of my life. Or carry an umbrella. And I hate umbrellas. Hardly ever use them. Would almost always prefer to get rained on. If it’s windy at all they become more trouble than they’re worth, and rain is often accompanied by wind. Especially the heavy stuff. Umbrellas are a ploy by the British (“the people of the windless rain,” as they’re called in the Bible) to reassert some sort of control over us. If a snake fell on me out of the sky, I would begin to use umbrellas. Even when it’s sunny. Or overcast without rain, which is the time when umbrellas have no use at all. Unless you live in East Texas, that is. The land of falling snakes.
The snake is probably not ok. Again, we’re assuming the hawk ate it. Although: The hawk kind of sucked at its job. Maybe it dropped the snake again? Bad performance by the hawk, overall. It caused two other creatures a whole lot of problems by failing to execute its hunt (or execute the snake) in a quick, competent manner. Someone put that hawk on corrective action.
