Boonsong Plaikaew, 54, felt a searing pain on her bottom and saw blood pouring down her legs while she was on the toilet at her home in Samut Prakan, central Thailand.
When she checked with her hand to see what had caused the pain, the snake, which had been hiding in the toilet bowl, bit her on the finger, news.com.au reported.
Plaikaew ran out of the bathroom and screamed for help, before her husband locked the door behind her.
He called animal rescuers, who arrived at the couple’s home accompanied by paramedics, who gave Plaikaew first aid before she was taken to hospital. She was released later that day.
Pythons are not venomous but doctors gave the woman antibiotics due to the potential risk of infection from the bites she had suffered.
Speaking from the hospital, Plaikaew said: “I did not see the snake hiding inside the bowl, so I was just doing my stuff when I was attacked,” Australian website news.com.au reported.
After the incident, animal rescuers captured the snake responsible for attacking her and removed it from the house in a sack. The animal will later be released back into the wild.
“From now on, I’ll check the toilet every time before I sit down,” Boonsong said.
It is not clear what species of snake Plaikaew was bitten by. But Thailand is home to three species of python: the reticulated, the Burmese and the Brongersma’s Blood.
The Reticulated python is widely regarded as the largest snake in the world, with specimens having been recorded that are more than 32-feet in length, according to the Australian Reptile Park. The massive snake, which is native to a large swathe of Southeast Asia and South Asia, has been known to kill and even eat humans.
Burmese pythons, meanwhile, are native to Southeast Asia and can grow ups to around 26-feet-long, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The snake is a troublesome invasive species in Florida, where it has established a population that could number more than 300,000 individuals.
The Brongersma’s Blood python is significantly smaller than the previous two species, typically growing to around 5-6 feet in length. This python is found in the Malay Peninsula, the Indonesian island of Sumatra and other small nearby islands.
All pythons kill by constriction, a process in which the snakes squeeze their prey to death before swallowing them whole. While these snakes aren’t venomous, they do have numerous backwards curving teeth inside their mouths, which help the serpent to grip onto their prey until it is incapacitated.
