Land snakes! Pythons seem to like it here
October 11, 1989
Finally, some good news about Florida wildlife.
The panthers might be vanishing, but the pythons have arrived.
You know all about Big Mama, the 20-foot beauty that was living comfortably under somebody's house in Fort Lauderdale.The neighborhood kids kept telling their parents that they'd seen this monster subterranean serpent eating raccoons and opossums, and naturally their parents didn't believe a word of it.
Once captured, Big Mama has gone on to become a star of local and national media. If you're in the TV biz, there's no video like snake video.
Then, just when you thought it was safe to be a raccoon again, along comes Junior, another semi-humongous python who turned up last week at a local construction site. Though measuring only about 17 feet, Junior was nonetheless stretched out and posed with every TV reporter in the tri-county area. The next day the poor creature died from internal bleeding. Such is the price of fame.
The authorities want us to believe that these two snakes were freaks in our midst and that their discovery within weeks of each other was just a wild coincidence. They want us to swallow the notion that these pythons were family pets that either escaped or were abandoned. But how many people do you know who own a 20-foot snake? Or even two 10-footers?
No, these carnivorous beasties had been loose for some time, doing what pythons do best—eating, sleeping and making lots of baby pythons (females lay up to 100 eggs).
Wildlife experts say there's nothing to worry about, but they said the same thing about Bufo toads, and look what happened. And parrots—every neighborhood now has its own flock of screeching parrots. Were all these birds somebody's pet? Not unless they staged a mass breakout. More likely, they've simply adopted South Florida as their new home and are merrily reproducing in the tops of our banyan trees.
Same goes for the pythons. They're here to stay. Both Big Mama and Junior were an exotic species called the reticulated python, which happens to be the longest snake in the world. Here are the most commonly asked questions about our newest tropical neighbor:
Where do they come from?
The reticulated python is native to Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Burma and the Philippines.
How big do they get?
Commonly growing to 25 feet, the largest known specimen was killed in 1912 on the north coast of Celebes.The snake measured 32 feet, 9 1/2 inches.
What do they eat?
Pythons prefer to dine on small mammals, although the larger specimens will gobble the occasional deer or goat. In one of the few documented cases of its kind, a 31-foot reticulated python is known to have eaten a 14-year-old boy on the island of Salebabu, in Indonesia. The attack happened several years ago, and there's no reason to suspect that this particular python has migrated to South Florida. Yet.
Are pythons swift, clever and keen-eyed?
No, pythons generally are slow, dull-witted and myopic. In stalking prey, however, they have the considerable advantages of stealth, camouflage and about 300 pounds of sheer muscle. They also love to climb trees and swim rivers.The good news is they're not poisonous. The bad news is they kill by brute constriction.
How do I know if one is living under my house?
If you haven't seen your poodle for a few days, it might be a good idea to check around. Fortunately, a python such as Big Mama only gets hungry every couple of months. The rest of the time they just sort of curl up and grow.
What do I do if I find a 32-foot python in my yard?
The one thing you don't do is try to kill it with a rake. Rakes work fine on pesky little garter snakes, but not pythons. All you do is get them incredibly ticked off, which is a bad idea. As any professional reptile trapper will tell you, the ideal python is an unperturbed python.
You said these things climb trees! So what happens if a giant python falls out of a tree and lands on top of me?
Then you can kiss your sorry asp goodbye.