‘Jesus, help me’ — a woman attacked by a snake that fell from the sky was saved by a hawk

When I first heard the story of the woman attacked by a snake that fell from the sky and then saved by a hawk after calling out, “Jesus, help me,” I thought it was an urban myth.  Every detail seemed too clever to be real.  And yet that’s exactly what happened just the other day to a woman in Texas.

Peggy Jones, of Silsbee, Texas, was sitting on her tractor mower in the garden of her house when a snake suddenly dropped from the sky, wrapped itself around her arm, and began to strike at her face.  Not only was that seriously strange, but Jones had been bitten by a venomous snake before, so she knew what could happen.

Jones waved her arm around wildly, trying to dislodge the snake.  At the same time, she called out repeatedly, “Jesus, help me.”

Two things happened that saved Jones.  First, the snake never reached her face.  Instead, it kept hitting her glasses, which it left covered with the venom it had hoped to inject into her.

Second, a hawk zoomed out of the sky, determined to dislodge the snake from her arm.  It eventually succeeded, although not before scratching and gouging her arm, leaving her bloodied and with the promise of many scars.  (If you want to see how badly Jones was scratched up, click here.  If you’re squeamish, do not click there.)

Image: Peggy Jones’s hawk-scratched arm.  YouTube screen grab.

Logic, of course, says that what happened makes absolute sense.  The hawk had grabbed the snake and started to fly off with it so that it could devour its meal in comfort.  The snake was able to wriggle free from the hawk’s grasp and, through sheer bad luck, landed on Jones.

The fact that Jones was waving her arm wildly affected the snake’s ability to strike at her, while her glasses acted as a shield against its fangs.  And of course, that hawk was not going to give up its prey, so it naturally returned to recover it.

But still…

Jones herself is certain that she was the beneficiary of God’s intervention.  While it’s true that the hawk was the one that dropped the snake in the first place, it could have given it up for a loss.  Instead, it was willing to fight for that snake, and it was the fight that saved Jones from a worse outcome than a bloodied arm.

All I can say is that everything is bigger and, possibly, weirder in Texas.