When a giant anaconda shows up at a construction site, the workers can quickly determine that something is wrong with it. It is moving extremely slowly and has a giant, unnatural bulge on its body. When a veterinarian cuts the animal open, revealing what was causing the bulge, nobody could believe it.
For a couple of months now, construction on a new road in the Amazon has been ongoing. Workers had been working hard to ensure this new road was finished as soon as possible. However, it has not been easy. The slow and difficult process so far, getting materials to the site, has been a challenge due to the lack of available trucks. The constant dangers of the rainforest have also slowed the process down. Workers are way behind schedule, and their employer is threatening to take action if they don’t finish the job on time. Their boss gave them an ultimatum until the end of the month, or they would get fired.
When the workers are clearing out the path where the pavement is going to be laid, one of them suddenly jumps back. He had seen something come out of the vegetation that scared him a lot. It was an anaconda, but not just any anaconda—the biggest they had ever seen. It slowly made its way across the end of the clearing they had just made. The workers were scared and surprised at the same time. What should they do?
When the giant anaconda was about halfway out of the bushes, a giant bulge could be seen on its body. The workers could barely believe their eyes. They had never seen anything like this before. They decided that they would have to call somebody and try to get hold of the nearest animal veterinarian.
The vet said that the snake might be pregnant and is about to lay her eggs here in the middle of the road where they were reconstructing the road. She tasked the workers with trying to figure out where the bulge is located on the body. Most of the workers hesitated if they should actually do this. What if the snake attacks them? The brave worker decides that he will locate it himself, at the most dangerous place, to make sure the others are safe.
Two men gear themselves out with some of the toughest material they can find, while another worker joins them to distract the snake if necessary. The two men grab the tail of the snake. All workers are holding their breath, hoping that everything goes according to plan. But there was nothing they had to be worried about, as the snake put up no fight whatsoever. It is becoming more and more obvious that something is very wrong with this animal.
Now the workers can see where the bulge is located on the body and call the vet back to report their findings. The vet’s tone changes immediately when she hears where the bulge is. The bulge is located at about the start of the stomach, but what could be inside this snake? The snake has obviously swallowed something it shouldn’t have and probably requires immediate surgery if it is to survive.
For the vet to get to the workers’ location was a challenge in itself because she did not know the exact location of the snake. The workers next to that, it was also rush hour, so she would probably get stuck in traffic. But she had to get there as fast as possible to give the snake the best chance of survival. There were still people in the company’s warehouse who knew the workers’ location exactly and how to get to the location. A manager was willing to help her, and they were going to use his all-terrain Jeep to traverse through the rainforest, which is never easy.
The journey takes about 3 hours in total, a journey on which the vet had considered many times if the life of this snake was worth wasting a whole day, plus extra, on it. After 3 hours, she got to the snake, and when she was finally able to lay eyes on the snake, she knew instantly that it was worth all this effort.
Some workers wanted to just let it go, as that meant they could finally continue working. They wanted to continue their job to make sure they were done before their deadline. Others had taken the doctor’s words to heart and knew that if they let the snake go now, it would certainly die. The snake was still moving very slowly, so the workers were able to block its path back into the depths of the jungle with plates of sheet metal they had brought with them as supplies.
The vet slowly approached the snake and swiftly injected the sedative into the snake’s lower body. Over the next couple of minutes, it slowed down more and more, and the vet was able to inject the snake with a couple more sedatives, which were necessary for a snake this size to go completely out.
Now the vet could finally turn her attention to the big bulge. She takes her surgery kit out and sets it up to get to work. The object stuck in its body was something that the snake had swallowed and could not be broken down by the digestive system. After getting through the skin, muscle, and esophagus, the source of the bulge is finally revealed to everybody.
Out of the snake came a small plastic box that baffled the vet at first, but the workers immediately knew what it was and realized what happened. This box was their cool box in which they kept most of their perishables like meat. However, the meat in this one had gone bad, so they left it out of the truck because it smelled really bad. The snake must have picked up the scent and thought it was prey, so it swallowed it whole.
With the cool box removed, the vet quickly starts stitching up the snake again. While she does this, she also chips the snake to track its movement and see if it survives the ordeal in the long run. It takes a few minutes for the snake to wake up. It is still dazed and confused at first, but after a while, it starts crawling away a lot faster than it was before the surgery. After the snake was gone again in the forest, the vet had one thing left that she needed to do. She thanked the workers for their incredible effort to keep the snake and themselves safe. After this, she went back to the city where she has more patients waiting for her to make sure the snake was okay.
The vet did one last thing. She monitored the snake’s behavior via the chip she implanted. The snake is behaving completely normal, and the vet can confidently say that the operation has been a success.
