A German zookeeper had a narrow escape on Saturday when a 13-foot Tiger python clasped itself onto her face in an attempt to devour her, Bild newspaper reported.

"Antonia" the python weighs in at over 100 pounds and has more than 70 teeth.

Snakes of her size living in the wild prey upon animals as large as deer and antilope, so eating zookeeper Renate K. wasn't an impossible proposition.

However, the zookeeper knew too much about snake anatomy to let herself be eaten. She used her thumbs to apply pressure on the snake's jaw and thereby stalled Antonia's assault. This in turn gave colleagues time to spray the python with warm water, a tactic that confused Antonia and caused her to loosen her toothy grip.

According to Jan Knoll, a snake expert from Hamburg, "spraying the python with warm water made it lose its sense of smell, causing it to become nervous and to pull back".