A woman was eaten alive by a 22ft python in Indonesia after she went to the jungle to collect rubber. Jahrah, a 54-year-old grandmother, disappeared on Friday night in woodland near her home in Jambi province, on the western island of Sumatra. Her remains were found two days later after locals who had gone to search for her saw a python with a swollen stomach.
The python was later killed by the locals who then cut open its body and found the woman's remains inside the stomach of the creature. According to reports, the python may have taken more than two hours to swallow Jahrah.
Agonizing Death
Locals went to the jungle searching for Jahrah on Sunday after she didn't return home for two days. Once deep inside the forest, they spotted the python which was resting after swallowing Jahrah. The locals initially were scared to move close to the python even after seeing it with a swollen stomach.
However, a few of them mustered courage and then killed the snake and tore open its stomach to find Jahrah inside. Anto, Jarah's village chief, who – like many Indonesians uses only the first name—said that the python probably killed her by suffocating her with its body.
The woman most likely suffered a torturous death that took up to two hours for the snake to swallow her, Anto said. The snake would have first pinned Jahrah in place with its teeth, which are angled backward to provide extra grip.
Then, using its strong body to wrap around her as swiftly as it could, it would have slowly compressed her until she was unable to breathe.
It would have lost its jaw and gobbled her completely once she had suffocated.
Completely Scary
Jahrah's body, including her clothes, appeared to be substantially undamaged after the snake was sliced open, suggesting that it may have taken the snake weeks to completely digest such a massive meal.
"The victim did not come home after saying goodbye to her family to go to the garden collecting rubber from trees on Friday," an official told local media.
"Her family then reported her missing to the local authorities, and a search has been carried out since then. Residents killed the snake and dissected its stomach. Everyone was astonished. It turned out that the woman we were looking for was in the snake's stomach," the official added.
It is not known when Jahrah's was killed and swallowed by the massive python since she went to the forest alone to collect rubber and there were no witnesses.
Anto claimed that the situation in his hamlet is very tense because several enormous pythons have been spotted close by lately. A longer snake, around 27 feet, was already attempted to be caught by locals, but they failed because they were too powerful, according to the official.
"Villagers are now worried that bigger snakes are still in the forest. The presence of this giant snake has also swallowed two resident goats," Anto said.
The giant reticulated python that devoured Jahrah is one of several in Indonesia. They eat wild animals and sporadically humans while living in isolated forests. On the island of West Sulawesi in March 2017, a man named Akbar Salubiro was swallowed alive and his stomach was hacked out by a python.
