'How I saved my dog from a 15ft python' - News - Evening Standard
       

'How I saved my dog from a 15ft python'

A British woman told how she fought off a 15ft python that was crushing her dog.

Catherine Leonard, 41, kicked and punched the snake after it wrapped itself around her four-year-old mongrel Poppy on a woodland path near her home in Hong Kong.

She was walking Poppy and two other dogs on a trail when the Burmese python bit Poppy and coiled itself around her.

On hearing "a yelping like a scream", Mrs Leonard, who moved to Hong Kong from London in 1993, attacked the python, which crushes its prey before swallowing it.

"I kicked it and tried to pull Poppy free," she said.

"Poppy managed to get free and it slithered away. I was shaken and really scared afterwards.

"That snake means business. A small child would weigh less than my dog."

A local snake catcher, Briton Dave Willott, said: "She was courageous and saved her dog. It would've been unconscious in two minutes and dead in five."

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