JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION (Atlanta, Georgia) 22 February 08 Burmese pythons may be headed up to Georgia (Mark Davis)

One day, Mr. Bivittatus may decide that Florida is just too crowded. Perhaps he'll cast his gaze to the west, where Alabama's pine forests offer a shady, quiet home. Or maybe he'll head straight north, following the blacktops to Georgia's green folds.

And there, he and his children likely will prosper, swallowing just about anything they can squeeze to death.

The pythons can reach 16 feet long and could slither into Georgia, reports the U.S. Geological Survey.

You read that correctly, dear reader. Mr. Bivittatus' full name is Python molarus bivittatus, the Burmese python. A federal agency says they are heading our way from the Florida Everglades, and they are hungry.

"They are going to chow down on deer," said Robert Reed, a research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, which released a report Wednesday predicting the big snakes would move into other states from their roosts in the Everglades. "They will chow down on pigs. They will chow down on turkeys."

Will they chow down Labrador retrievers? Maine coon cats? Grandma's canary? Reed says yes.

But don't run to Home Depot asking for snake wire to fence off your house — not just yet. Like a lot of Florida residents, the snakes don't travel fast. It could be decades before the first python slips over the state line. The greater danger, biologists say, likely may come from former pet pythons that are already here — reptiles dumped in forests, parks and backyards.

A retired University of Georgia professor who wrote a book about Southeastern snakes is not so certain pythons will crawl our way.

(More on him in a bit; let's read the scary stuff first.)

Pythons and other big constrictors are "highly adaptable to new environments," the USGS said in its report. Burmese pythons, which can reach 16 feet long and weigh 160 pounds, could find comfortable digs in as much as one-third of the continental United States.

The USGS came to this conclusion by "climate matching" 149 areas in Asia, where pythons naturally occur, to regions in the United States, Reed said. Scientists took into account temperature, rainfall and availability of food. If the conditions in a village in Sri Lanka, for example, were comparable to that of a town in South Carolina, what would stop the pythons from moving in?

Based on that standard, scientists devised a U.S. map highlighting states where pythons would flourish. The big snakes, they said, could range nearly into Maryland. They could crawl westward through Alabama, Louisiana, Texas. When they reached California, they could head north, stopping somewhere between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

They're nothing to fear, said Jeff Jackson, who taught herpetology courses at UGA until he retired in 2001.

"Maybe they'll expand their range," said Jackson, author of "Snakes of the Southeastern United States." "And maybe they won't."

Perhaps Mr. Bivittatus knows. Dear reader, you are welcome to ask him.
Burmese pythons may be headed up to Georgia

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