Some humans go the whole nine yards to stand up to the Animal Uprising™. Or at least 16 feet. When a 16-foot reptile raider launched an assault on Joaquim Pereira's grandson, the man wasn't about to allow the tyke to be the blue plate special. He took matters into his own hands – literally – and fought the sneaky snake with fists, rocks and knife and defeated the marauding python.
"When I saw the snake wrapped around my grandson's neck I thought it was going to kill him," Joaquim Pereira told the Agencia Estado news service. "It was agonizing, I pulled it from one side, but it would come back on the other."
Pereira's 8-year-old grandson, Mateus, was attacked by the anaconda near a creek on his grandfather's ranch in the city of Cosmorama, about 250 miles northwest of Sao Paulo.
While the boy was playing with friends, the snake attacked and wrapped itself around him, police officer Hudson Augusto said. Anacondas are not poisonous, but kill their prey by coiling around them and squeezing until victims suffocate.
"It brought me to the ground and bit me," the boy told Globo TV, which showed footage of the dead snake. "Then it started crawling up my neck and began suffocating me."
The battle last for half an hour and ended up with Pereira victorious, his grandson safe if injured and the raw material for a few pairs of really nice boots.
