UNION-TRIBUNE (San Diego, California) 24 February 08 Slithering to a toasty hide-out near you? (Logan Jenkins)
Just when I was recovering from recurrent nightmares about killer bees migrating to North County from Africa via Latin America, this alarming news:
Legions of Burmese pythons could be slithering their way through the Florida Panhandle, Texas and Arizona all the way to North County.
Whatever you do, don't laugh. This is serious snake stuff.
Last week, the U.S. Geological Survey released a new climate map showing that the behemoth constrictors – they reportedly can measure up to 20 feet and outweigh NFL linebackers – could, in the near future, adapt to almost anywhere in the southern third of the United States.
That land mass, if you're wondering, includes North County.
Assuming global warming heats up our cold, dry winters, pythons with a strong procreative urge could be checking out the local real estate for toasty places to nest.
At this writing, colonies of undocumented (i.e., non-native) pythons are concentrated in South Florida, the horrific result of released pets in the swampy wild.
But if these fierce predators that can feast on everything from rats and dogs to small deer (and, I fear, smallish people) develop a case of wanderlust, where else would they go other than due north – and then, when it gets cold, due west, toward the Golden State?
No one really knows when this ground-level exodus may occur, but it's obviously of grave concern to herpetologists.
“Currently,” a USGS press release reads, “scientists with the USGS and Everglades National Park are investigating the behavior and biology of these snakes – that is, what are their requirements for survival? This information will help refine predictions of where the snakes might go next and their likelihood of survival.”
Before you accuse me of being a scaredy-cat, consider that the San Francisco Chronicle, along with other media outlets, informed its sophisticated readership of the soon-to-be-dire threat.
“The giant snakes are slithering from Florida toward the Bay Area, very slowly to be sure, but inexorably,” the Chronicle reported in a front-page story.
Now, I didn't major in geography, but it seems likely that the pythons will hit North County long before they side-wind their way into the Bay Area.
The muscle-bound snakes can travel up to 20 miles a month, Gordon Rodda, a USGS zoologist, told the Chronicle.
At that rate, the California ETA would be roughly 2020, the Chronicle estimated. (A trip to the calculator confirmed that timetable.)
“It would be exceptional for one animal to be that unidirectional in its movement,” Rodda said, “but it's mathematically possible.”
In other words, snakes don't normally glide as the crow flies, but you never know. The chances of such a beeline happening are better than nil.
If a team of monkeys can type a perfect copy of “Hamlet,” what's to keep an invasive python with a keen sense of direction from rounding up his main squeezes and striking out for California, notching up mammalian prey the whole length of the Sun Belt?
The famous words attributed to Napoleon may come back to haunt us: “An army marches on its stomach.”
OK, I kid the Chronicle. (Just as I assume it was squeezing the legs of its readers.)
Jeff Lemm, a herpetologist with the San Diego Zoo's conservation research program, put my fancifully founded python fears into the cooler.
“You should be more worried about Sasquatch,” Lemm said. (How did he know that I stay up nights worried about Bigfoot migrating south to North County?)
Lemm said it's conceivable that future global warming could make it balmy enough in these parts for Burmese pythons and their constricting cousins to breed, but there's really not enough suitable habitat for them to proliferate into a significant threat.
Besides, if they somehow avoid getting run over by cars and slither into the comfy sewer system, pythons would find it tough going.
“There are too many alligators down there,” Lemm said. (God, one of my other worst fears.)
Still, I sought more reassurance.
Is there any way giant pythons could migrate en masse from Florida to North County?
“Maybe if they catch a wayward Cuban's boat,” Lemm said.
Besides, he added, when global warming puts the squeeze on coastal California, “we'll all be underwater anyway.”
Now that's a relief.
Slithering to a toasty hide-out near you?

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