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It was just one year ago we read about the pure terror of a full-grown, adult man being swallowed by a giant python in Indonesia. Over the weekend, we learned the real-life horror movie has a sequel.
It happened again.
This time the victim was a 54-year-old Indonesian woman named Wa Tiba. Worried about wild boars eating her crops, she ventured out to check her cornfield Thursday night. She never returned.
Led by the woman’s sister, a large search party from the village of Persiapan Lawela went looking for her Friday morning. According to reports, the field was about a half mile from her house and was surrounded by cliffs, caves and a number of reticulated pythons, the longest snakes on the globe.
It didn’t take long for them to find Tiba’s footprints, her flashlight, her machete, and her slippers.
Then, just yards away, they discovered the most terrifying thing imaginable.
It was 23 feet long and so bloated it could barely move. A long bulge midway down its body had a foreboding look to it.
The villagers killed the snake and laid it out on the ground. The villagers crowded around it, clamoring and crying, with some making videos as a man knelt and carefully cut across the bulge with a machete.
He parted the snake flesh, and the result was much as it had been on the other island a year earlier. Tiba lay intact inside the snake, clothed just as she had been when she went to check the corn.
It’s common for pythons to eat smaller mammals. But humans? That’s supposed to be as rare as ‘winning the lottery while being struck by lightning at the same time.’
Below is video of the discovery. But a warning, this video is relatively graphic.
Josh Helmuth is a sports reporter in St. Louis who contributes to Mandatory.
