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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Yours truly would almost certainly be voted as the least likely advocate for mass murder... but something drastic needs to be done to rescue the Florida Everglades ecosystem from invasive Burmese pythons.
Prized by exotic animal collectors, these snakes have been sold as pets for decades. Escaping or dumped, some started showing up in the South Florida wilds some 50 years ago.
With no natural predators and a veritable feast of tasty critters to feed on, the pythons found heaven in their new habitat.
At first, they were a curiosity with their limited numbers having no noticeable impact, but the environmental situation spiraled out of control after 1992 when Hurricane Andrew destroyed a commercial breeding facility releasing innumerable snakes into the swamps.
Pythons have a lifespan exceeding 20 years and can lay 50 to 100 eggs annually.
With full-grown females stretching 15 feet or more and weighing in at over 150 pounds, these aren’t your grandmother’s garter snakes.
They are constrictors who squeeze their prey, primarily small mammals and slow-to-react birds, to suffocate them and then swallow the animal whole. Their diet also includes reptiles such as juvenile alligators and crocodiles. As well as petite pets.
Although their disarticulating jaw and stretchy skin allows them swallow well above their size –a 77-pound deer has been documented– it’s doubtful that elderly ladies, like the socialite depicted in Carl Hiaasen’s book Squeeze Me, are significantly at risk.
In the past few years, the Burmese python has become the national park’s apex predator, squeezing out bobcats, ospreys, hawks, eagles and even the iconic Florida panther, depriving these native predators of their primary food sources, and disrupting the ecology of the Everglades.
And the economy on which many Floridians depend.
In response, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission along with the South Florida Water Management District established a python elimination program. Their hundred bounty hunters have captured and killed an estimated 15,800 pythons since 2019.
Because Burmese pythons are a regulated species, they cannot be transported alive and must be destroyed on-site. The only protection non-native reptiles have in Florida is the ethical and legal obligation to ensure they are euthanized humanely.
The American Veterinary Medical Association recommends a two-step process to prevent suffering and destroy the brain completely.
Once the animal loses consciousness hunters destroy the python's brain by “pithing” – a technique to kill the animal by driving a needle or metal rod such as a screwdriver into its brain rendering the cerebral cortex and brain stem nonfunctional. Decapitating or hammering the head to mush is messy but just as effective.
Pythons can then be butchered for their skins and meat... although the Florida Department of Health recently issued an “Do Not Consume Python” advisory due to high mercury levels absorbed from the wildlife consumed in areas rife with industrial pollution.
To raise awareness about the impact of non-native species on the Everglades ecosystem, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sponsors the annual Florida Python Challenge. This year, it attracted 934 participants from 30 states and Canada, but the record 294 invasive reptiles destroyed are but a drop in the bucket when compared to the fecundity of the female snakes.
Snakes are very effective at staying hidden but, in addition to GPS-implanted male scout-snakes leading trackers directly to female pythons, bounty hunters may soon be getting an even higher-tech assist.
Solar-powered, waterproofed, remote-controlled robots designed to look like rabbits and emitting a python-attracting odor are in beta-testing to decoy the elusive reptiles out of hiding. Then the motion-activated camera built into the bunny alerts an operator to send out a human contractor to terminate it.
With climate change, the areas at risk from depredation of their native species is expanding. Pythons are now slithering north from the park and may be able to survive as far north as Georgia as temperatures rise and survivalist pythons find bunkers to shelter in during chilly interludes.
Rewilding pets is a problem everywhere. In Los Angeles, cats “freed” when their owners lost their homes during Covid became tasty coyote snacks, and home-raised California desert tortoises have infected populations in the wild with a deadly respiratory infection.
NOTE: For those who are interested, Hiaasen’s best-selling book also skewers a thinly-veiled Donald Trump, although one who had a stronger grasp of logic and language than his real-life counterpart.
In 2020, the Squeeze Me author, fearing Trump would try to stay in office regardless of the election results lamented: “The trouble is, as satire, you can’t improve on the words that really come out of his mouth… I surrendered to the fact that whatever the character said or did was never going to be as absurd as the real thing.”
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
