Watch Out For Snakes!

My intense fear of snakes, while perhaps not a subject addressed yet in this forum, is well-known and indeed severe. However, I feel strongly that this particular news story should terrify the beejesus out of everyone. See, Burmese pythons are taking over Florida. Thousands of morons in Florida keep buying these animals as pets, neglecting to consider that these things grow up to be 20 feet long and 250 pounds (!), and upon realizing that their pet could dispatch of them with relative ease, release the snakes into the swamps, where they meet other snakes, and have lots of little baby snakes. Several recent developments have brought this story to national attention. First of all, the pythons keep eating endangered species in the Everglades, which is bothering some environmentally-minded folks down there. They decided to find out how many Burmese pythons there were in the Everglades, reasonably enough, although the methodology employed for capturing rogue snakes alarms me a bit: "You cruise the roads, and when you see a python you grab hold of whatever part of the python you can, and hope you're faster." Sorry? That is the US Fish and Wildlife strategy for dealing with the exponential boom in the Florida python population? Consider this excerpt from a news story about a group of biologists being trained in snake wrangling: "Ostrom got a sharp reminder later on why he takes all this so seriously, as an anaconda bit him as he was putting the snake away. 'That's why you wear gloves,' he said good-naturedly. Despite the bite, the group feels well-versed for its next exotic encounter." Whaaaat? An anaconda bit him? And he was okay about this?

Anyway. When the Fish and Wildlife people did their count, they estimated there were many many thousands of Burmese pythons in the Everglades alone, and lots more living across the rest of southern Florida. Then, a couple of days ago, a report was issued saying that about a third of the United States features terrain and climate suitable for the pythons, and that we could soon be seeing pythons as far north as Virginia. You know how alien species like kudzu basically take over their ecosystem because they have no natural predators? It's like that, only kudzu is generally not disposed to or capable of eating you whole.

Perhaps you think I overstate things. Maybe. But take this account of an Everglades park ranger into account: "Although elusive by nature, these giant snakes have been seen doing battle with alligators, climbing trees fast enough to catch nesting chicks and swallowing animals as large as wood storks and deer." Doing BATTLE with ALLIGATORS?!?! Why on earth am I just hearing about this now?

It occurs to me a fairly high percentage of my friends are currently tossing frisbees or rowing about right in the middle of snake territory. Watch out.