The Anaconda Versus The Grandfather

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A 66-year-old Brazilian man wrestled with a 15-foot (5-metre) anaconda for nearly half an hour to free his grandson from the snake's crushing death grip, local media reported on Friday.

Matheus Pereira de Araujo, 8, would likely be dead inside the belly of the 80 pound (35 kg) anaconda if his grandfather had not heard his screams for help, zoologists said.

Anacondas, the biggest snakes in the world, live in swamps and rivers. They kill prey by asphyxiation or drowning.

When the snake struck Araujo, who lives in the world's third largest metropolis of Sao Paulo, he was playing with a cousin on Wednesday in a creek bed on his grandfather's farm 310 miles (500 km) from the city in a town called Cosmorama.

"It was very fast. I didn't have time to do anything," the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper quoted Araujo as saying. "My grandfather is a hero -- I was so afraid of dying."

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