My GF and I were talking about this. We are both people who like snakes. I used to help out at a pet store that had boa's, retic's, anacondas, and your boring ol corn snakes. The anacondas could be snippy. Especially the young greens for some reason. Never had a problem with the browns. I actually like the pythons over the boas. One report I saw on the problem noted the number of Burmese people seem to set free. These are beautiful snakes. Well tempered and easy to handle. When you have nitwits who buy one and then get scared as they grow rather than take them to a zoo or other dealer they think they can just turn them loose. This is cruel and unfair to the snake. The biggest Burmese I ever handled was just over 14 feet and around 125 lbs. It was a store pet that was not for sale and for safety reasons we always had two people on it when removing it to clean the cage or to show him off. The snake never made any overtly aggressive moves towards anyone but would instinctively tighten around your leg or arm and one that big has an amazing amount of power.
You can to some extent control their growth by feeding. The mistake some seemed to make was overfeeding and the snake would get used to that and then if they decided to cut back they could actually create some aggression due to nothing more than hunger. People are the same way. I get cranky when hungry.
Now what has happened is with a little help from humans, evolution has taken a turn. One that we now want to reverse. Not easy to do. Ever see Jurassic Park? Very astute observation by Jeff Goldblum in the one film when he notes that nature will find a way to survive. These snakes are adapting and now they want to wipe them out. May be too late. May need to start culling them but at the same times accept that they are here to stay. I also saw a program about a rat problem in the glades. Big friggin rats! I'd rather have a 12 foot boa in my back yard than a family of 10lb rats.
Perhaps the better way is to start culling the morons that introduce these new species into areas where they never were.
Jim, no idea how many yrs back... but in South Mobile Ala a guy raising nutria went bust and simply opened his cages and let them go.
I am not particularly afraid of rodents of any kind, however some can be aggressive. These are pretty big. I clearly remember in 1973 when I was there for my grandfathers funeral, mom sending me out to dump garbage and one being big enough to stand on its hind legs and flip the can lid off and challenge me for the contents. I dropped my bag and let him have at it as I backed off. However.. rats or nutria are NOT top of the food chain animals and pythons are.
As I said before I went pig hunting down in the glades a week ago. I noticed a lot of things.. 5 or 6 yrs ago it was not uncommon for me to see a half dozen or more coons in a trip. Last weekend we saw none. NO rabbits, normally on US 27 at dusk you can see them by the hundreds as cars whiz by inches from their heads eating on the roadside... again.. I saw maybe a dozen.. not the usual massive numbers..
The python john killed was measured at 9 feet and had a nice bulge we figure a large pig. There in lays the problem.. with a buffet laid out before them, they are eating like mad, breeding like mad, and taking over the Glades and forever changing it.....for the worse.
This whole thing reminds me of how the Brazilian Pepper plant has taken over the Glades. One only has to see patches of land where it has been pulled up so see how nothing native is growing there. It is an ongoing battle to eradicate it.. I am sure the same can and will be said of the python.
This whole python thing reaches further than most realize. It is about preserving this piece of land for future generations. I have been going into the Glades since I was in my early teens. I have seen it change in some ways for the better and many for the worse. I clearly remember when some idjits had the notion to plant an airport in the middle of the glades and how that was stopped. I am a member of Friends of the Falknahatchee... a preserve in the western Everglades. While I am by no means a liberal tree hugger. I do know that some things once lost will never be again. Coral reefs and the Western Everglades (or the Glades as a whole for that matter) are two that come readily to mind.
I find it interesting in an odd sort of way that so many will shine on, so to speak, the pythons in the Glades issue, but rant all day long about Lionfish on the reefs...it IS the same exact difference. Well almost the same difference.. With Lionfish one can eventually train other fish to eat them... Pythons are at the top... NO one eats them, they eat everything in sight. When the small game is gone, then the Raptors suffer and so on..
