Those of you who have heard me tell this story, I now have a copy of the photo for you, those who have not heard it here it is one more time;



As many of you know, I am a Deputy Sheriff in Collier County FL. Part of our area covers the Everglades Swamp. There is a sustainable population of Wild Burmese Python that now call the Everglades home. Well one night about three years ago a trucker stop off at our Everglades Sub Station to let us know he ran over a snake, it was very early morning, still night really. Well the reaction from our Deputies was, “duh, this is the Everglades everyone one runs over snakes.” But the driver was shook up and claimed this snake to be “Huge, the size of a telephone pole!” Well as opposed to arresting this truck driver for DUI, one of our Sgt.s went to go see what this fellow was so worked up about and this is what they found.



The Ford Crown Vic Patrol car is 21’9” long not including the push bumpers on the front. The Burmese Python came 6” short of the rear bumper of the Squad Car when laid out next to it. This is one of the Wild Burms found in our swamp down here.



I have a third picture it is of a South FL Water Management worker who swore that he had killed a 12‘ Diamond Back Rattle snake out in what we call the South Block (the northern fringe of the Everglades Swamp) He sent me this picture and sure enough he killed a 12’ snake but it was another Burm, these things are all over the place. I can not get this picture to load onto Kingsnake, file size too big, but I can e-mail it to anyone who would like to see it! Fish and Game have recorded 4 incidents with Alligators and Burms Struggling with each other. In all four cases the gator ended up with the Burm, but it appears that Burms have developed a taste for gator meat and seem to attack them regardless of size. At time I love living in South FL, The Feral animal capital of the WORLD!!!

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Jim Hopkins "Hoppy"

Hopkins Holesale Herps

Hopfam1@aol.com

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