Python
An Indonesian man wrestled a 23-foot-long python and lived to tell the tale. In this photo, a 12-foot-long Burmese python that was captured in the backyard of a home slithers on the ground at its new home at the A.D. Barnes Park in south Miami, Florida, Oct. 10, 2005. Getty Images/ Robert Sullivan

On Saturday, an Indonesian man tried to assist local people in clearing a road in the Indragiri Hulu Regency of Riau Province in Indonesia which was being blocked by a 23-feet-long python. As the man tried to clear the way, the deadly snake turned on him.

Robert Nababan, 37, a local resident of the area who works as a security guard at a palm oil plantation was driving back home from work when he came across the enormous reptile which was blocking one of the main roads as it made its way from one side to the other. Nababan quickly got down from his vehicle and started helping the pedestrians in moving the snake out of the way, Daily Star reported.

Unfortunately, during the endeavor, the reptile turned around and attacked Nababan, bit his arms and also tried to wrap its body around him. Nababan collapsed in the middle of the road, wrestling with the reptile as it continued coiling around him.

After a life and death battle, Nababan emerged victorious, killing the snake but not without serious bodily damage. His left arm in which the python sunk its razor-sharp teeth in was lacerated. He was rushed to a nearby hospital.

“I tried to catch it. It bit my arm, and we wrestled for a while,” Nababan said from his hospital bed. Apart from suffering deep wounds, the Indonesian man also was extremely exhausted due to the long battle with the creature.

The limp corpse of the snake was strung between two trees like a washing line in a part of the village as a trophy to remind people of the almost impossible man versus beast battle that Nababan managed to win, Coconuts Jakarta reported.

There have been many snake attacks in the recent past in Indonesia and not all victims have been lucky to get out of the attacks alive. In March, 25-year-old Akbar Salubiro encountered a huge python when he went to harvest palm oil in a remote village on the island of West Sulawesi.

After he had gone missing for a few days, relatives found a 23-foot-long python sprawled on the backyard of Salubiro with a bulging stomach. Upon slicing open the predator, the villagers found the lifeless body of Salubiro intact within the reptile, News reported.

According to Cornell Professor Dr. Harry W. Greene who studied the incident, death came quickly to Salubiro as a reticulated python is known to coil around a person’s body until one’s airways are blocked and blood circulation to the brain is cut off. With one or all of those reasons, a person would experience instant death, USA Today reported.

"Big pythons are incredibly powerful animals with huge muscles to both move and eat and constrict," said Stephen Ressel, a professor at the College of Atlantic. "They certainly can pack a huge force as they're constricting."

Even though pythons mostly feed on primates, including monkeys, sometimes orangutans and, on rare occasions they are known to feed on humans.

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