The 64-year-old was standing in her kitchen in her home outside Bangkok when she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her thigh. When she looked down, she saw a gigantic snake slithering around her leg.
The python, between four and five meters long, continued to move up along her body.
I grabbed the snake's head, but it refused to let go. It just squeezed harder, says the woman to the newspaper Thairath.
Pinned against her kitchen door, she screamed for help, but not until an hour and a half later did a neighbor hear her cries and raised the alarm. The police who arrived found the woman slumped against the door, exhausted and pale, unable to move in the snake's hard grip.
It wasn't until around two hours after the attack that the police managed to free her by hitting the animal on the head with a crowbar. The snake escaped before it could be caught. The 64-year-old woman needed treatment for several bites, but is otherwise reported to be doing well.
Pythons are not venomous, but hunt by biting their prey and then suffocating them with their body. The largest python species in Thailand is the reticulated python, whose largest specimens can grow up to ten meters long and weigh up to 130 kilos.