RIO DE JANEIRO - A seven-year-old girl has been saved at the last moment from being dragged off into the Brazilian jungle by an anaconda, when a quick-witted young man hacked off the snakeÂ’s head. The girl was only slightly harmed after being dragged off by the nine-metre, 200-kilo reptile which coiled itself round her legs and had effortlessly begun dragging her off, media reports said Sunday.
The young man - identified only as ‘Miguel’ by taxi-driver witness Raimundo Carvalho - used a machete to lop off the snake’s head. The reptile twitched for several minutes before finally dying. The reports said the girl had only slight injuries and shock after the incident last Wednesday in Alca Viaria district close to the provincial capital of Belem in northern Para state.
‘I just didn’t know what to do,’ Carvalho told G1 news portal of the drama he found going on when he heard the girl’s desperate cries for help. ‘Then, thank goodness, this young man called Miguel came on the scene and cut the animal’s head off.’ The snake - which would have killed by constriction - had already dragged the girl several metres.
Such attacks by anacondas are on the increase in the BrazilÂ’s Amazon region. Experts put the blame on global warming deforestation which drives the snakes to human-inhabited areas in the search for food. |