After rescuing a 10 metre-long python, things took a turn for the worse for a forest ranger in India.
Sanjoy Dutta was leading a team of rangers in a forest in the Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal, India, when they spotted the python.
Dutta and his team had rescued the snake in the forest, and were about the release it back into the wild when the ranger put the dangerous animal over his shoulder to pose for a few quick photographs.
And, as quite a few people before him, Dutta learned the hard way that posing with wild animals for photos is never really a good idea.
Check out the frightening moment here:
After placing the serpent around his shoulders, the snake did what snakes tend to do and tightened its grip, wrapping itself around Dutta’s neck and trying to strangle him.
Despite the danger, a crowd of people still stopped to take pictures and selfies with the ranger and snake.
However, Dutta quickly walked away, obviously rather panicked after the close call.
Luckily, other rangers were on hand to come to his aid, loosening the snake and pulling it off from his shoulders.
The python was later released unharmed.
One person who sadly didn’t escape a python’s deadly grip was a mother in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Locals found Wa Tiba, 54, in the body of a 27-foot python, over a week after her two children raised the alarm their mother had gone missing last Thursday 6 June.
You can watch the shocking scene unfold in the video below:
The horrifying footage shows the moment their mother was cut from a 27ft python which had attacked Tiba while she was gardening locally, on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.
The mother of two was last seen on Thursday evening at 6.45pm when she went out, but her children became concerned when there was no sign of her the next morning at their home.
They began looking for her at 6am and a later found her sandals, machete and torch around 30 metres from a patch of bushes that appeared ruffled.
Wa Tiba’s sons then made a chilling discovery: a huge python lounged on the ground barely able to move due to an enormous bulge in its belly after it had swallowed the woman head first.
Resident Ayu Kartika said:
Everybody was crying, everybody was shocked. The poor woman. This is like a horror movie. People are terrified. We are scared to go outside. We can only pray for a safety.
The frantic young men called police and by 9am hundreds of villagers had gathered round the patch of grass in the remote Mabolu Village in the Lohia Regency of Muna province.
The knife Wa Tiba had gone out with the previous evening was found on the floor, suggesting she had dropped it after being attacked by the python.
Her head was towards the snake’s tail and her feet at its mouth, showing that she had been swallowed head first.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.