It makes you want to snowbird in Florida. 500 pounds of pythons were recently found near Naples, Florida. The “mating ball” – either the stuff of a horror movie or some weird erotica – contained one big reptile longer than 16 feet.
500 pounds of pythons — just in time for Invasive Species Week
Perhaps the serpents were celebrating National Invasive Species Week. Pythons, after all, aren’t native to Florida, and both the state government and nonprofit groups have been working for years to rid the Sunshine State of members of the Pythonidae family.
The surprise catch of 500 pounds of pythons was made by a group from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. How many pythons does it take to make a quarter-ton? In this case, it was 11.
“Good at what they do”
Announcing the catch on their Facebook page, the Conservancy took a lift from The Miami Herald. “For 10 years, we’ve been catching and putting them (Burmese pythons) down humanely,” conservatory wildlife spokesperson Ian Bartoszek wrote in the post. “You can’t put them in zoos and send them back to Southeast Asia. Invasive species management doesn’t end with rainbows and kittens. These are remarkable creatures, here through no fault of their own. They are impressive animals, good at what they do.”
Good at what they do? 500 pounds of pythons are probably “good” at scaring the bejeebers out of a lot of us.
For more, see this from the Miami Herald.
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YIKES !
Thank you, Russ and Tina! 🙂 Yes, what Bill said, “Yikes!” Safe travels, maybe far from any Florida pythons! 🙂