One should never get in the way of a hawk and its prey.

Peggy Jones learned that lesson in a most unwitting way on July 25 as she and her husband were finishing a day of yard work on a six-acre property that they own in Silsbee, Texas.

First, in an improbable occurrence, a snake fell from the clear blue sky, wrapping itself tightly around Peggy’s right forearm.

“I immediately screamed and started swinging my arm to shake the snake off,” Peggy, 64, said in an interview. “I was screaming, ‘Jesus, help me, please, Jesus, help me!’”

The snake wrapped itself around her arm more tightly. It hissed and lunged at her face, at times striking her glasses. But then, Peggy realised, the snake, too, was an unwitting victim.

A brown-and-white hawk flying overhead had fumbled and dropped the four-and-a-half-foot-long scaly creature. The hawk quickly joined the fracas, swooping down to wrench its serpentine dinner from Peggy’s arm.

The hawk snatched, scratched and jabbed at her arm “three to four times”, to reclaim its meal, Peggy recalled. Each time, its powerful talons slashed her forearm.

At one point, the bird dragged Peggy’s arm up into the air. On the fourth try, it successfully uncoiled the snake and flew away. The “horrific” ordeal, Peggy said, lasted about 15 to 20 seconds, and left her arm scratched, bruised and punctured.

“I looked down at my arm and it was totally covered in blood,” Peggy said.

Wendell Jones, her husband, eventually noticed that his wife was screaming, running in a zigzag pattern and flailing her arms. He promptly helped her into their truck and drove to the hospital. On the way there, he recalled, Peggy was tongue-tied.

“By the time I got to her, she was pretty hysterical,” Wendell, 66, said.

Peggy believes that she will physically recover, though she said that she has had
recurring nightmares about the episode. She has had trouble eating and sleeping, she said, and at times will scream and yell out for help in her sleep.

New York Times News Service