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A WOMAN has placed a frantic 911 call after her pet boa constrictor latched onto her nose and wrapped itself around her neck.
A 2.6 metre red-tailed boa constrictor.
A PET boa constrictor has been decapitated by firefighters with a pocket knife after latching on to its owner’s nose.
A 45-year-old Ohio woman, who has not been identified, adopted the 1.7-metre reptile a day earlier along with another boa constrictor.
Panic stricken, she called 911 and told the dispatcher, “Please, I have a boa constrictor stuck to my face!”
In the recording, you can clearly hear the stunned dispatcher replying, “You have a what?”
Firefighters chop head off boa constrictor attacking woman’s face
After exchanging her location, the woman appears to sound increasingly distressed saying, “Please hurry, it’s stuck to my nose.”
When the police and firefighters arrived at her home, they found her lying in her driveway covered in blood with the snake wrapped around her neck, biting her face.
“The snake wouldn’t release,” Sheffield Lake Fire Lt. Wes Mariner told Fox 8 News. “Because of how close it was wrapped around her, there were no other options from what I understand.”
Raymond Hoser, Australia’s “Snakeman” and the world’s leading snake expert, firmly disagrees. “It’s rubbish. All they had to do was pry its mouth open,” Hoser told news.com.au.
Hoser holding a mixture of dangerous snakes.Source:Supplied
Though the woman can be heard saying on the 911 call that she was unable to get the snake’s mouth open, Hoser said the emergency services could have done more.
“The boa constrictor is harmless. It’s not venomous. They could have easily wrenched the snake’s mouth open.”
Hoser has been working with reptiles for over 40 years, writing best-selling books and over 150 original scientific papers. He believes that it was unnecessary to decapitate the snake, “The people who killed it are the ones who should be hauled over the coals.”
The snake expert tells news.com.au that in incidences like this people simply, “sh*t themselves.”
“The boa constrictor is a pussy cat,” Hoser says, “the threat of snakes is totally blown out of proportion to reality because of shows like Deadly 60 and Crocodile Hunter.”
Twitter users were divided on the matter but many argued the snake should not have been killed.
According to Lt. Mariner, the woman — who is said to own 11 other snakes — sustained non life-threatening injuries.
The remains of the boa constrictor were thrown away in a rubbish bin.
With Australia containing over 140 species of land snake and around 32 species of sea snake, Hoser stressed the importance of educating ourselves and our children.