The snake and the Ohio woman it was wrapped around had not always been at odds.

The 911 dispatcher who answered the woman’s frantic call on Thursday was able to discern some aspects of the interspecies relationship that had soured.

There had been some sort of rescue, the woman said after giving her location in the Ohio city of Sheffield Lake and a breathless description of the predicament she was in, according to a 911 recording obtained by the Elyria, Ohio-based Chronicle-Telegram. The woman had brought the 5½-foot-long snake into her home along with another snake in recent days.

Now, she said, she was on the floor, with an unyielding boa constrictor wrapped around her body.

“Oh, please. I have a boa constrictor stuck to my – my face,” she told the dispatcher.

The snake wasn’t venomous, the woman said. And it wasn’t cutting off her breathing or circulation – at least not yet. But there was “blood everywhere.”

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“Oh, God, hurry, please. He’s around my waist and he has my nose.”

Near the end of the recording, she went silent for a while, but then sirens could be heard.

Sheffield Lake Fire Chief Tim Card told the Chronicle-Telegram what first responders found when they reached her.

“It was wrapped around her neck and biting her nose and wouldn’t let go,” Card said. “They had to cut its head off with a knife to get it to let go of her face.”

While it appeared to be the first snake attack of this magnitude in Sheffield Lake, such dangerous interactions are not uncommon, according to Born Free, an organization that advocates against owning exotic pets such as snakes.

The organization catalogued more than 471 attacks by snakes between 1995 and 2013

The Sheffield Lake woman was rescued, but it’s unclear what became of her snakes and of her.


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