THE RECORD (Kitchener, Ontario) 15 December 06 Exotic pythons a danger to Everglades; Biologists on mission to rid sensitive area of snakes which are upsetting natural order (Todd Lewan)
Everglades National Park, Fla. (AP): "Snake!" Hearing this shout, Skip Snow slammed on the brakes. He and his partner, Lori Oberhofer, leaped out and took off running toward a pair of three-metre Burmese pythons sunning themselves on a levee.
Snow, a wildlife biologist, grabbed one of the creatures by the tail. The python, Oberhofer says, did not care much for that.
"It made a sound like Darth Vader breathing,'' she says, "and then its head swung around and I saw this white mouth flying through the air.''
Snow saw the mouth, too -- the jaws open 180 degrees, the gums an obscene white, the needle-sharp teeth bared in an almost devilish grin. He let out a shriek, then blinked, and when his eyes opened the python's head was hanging in mid-air, several centimetres from his own.
Oberhofer had snared the python in mid-strike.
"I snagged it right behind its head, on its neck,'' the 43-year-old wildlife technician recalls. "It was pure reflex -- a defensive move. I don't know if I could ever do it again.''
The python hadn't succumbed yet, however. "They defecate on you, on purpose, hoping to make you reconsider what you're doing,'' Oberhofer says. "It's not pleasant.''
In the end, the humans were victorious, if not sweet-smelling: Both snakes were bagged, trucked off to the Everglades Research Center, euthanized and necropsied -- meaning their innards were dissected, then meticulously inspected, for the benefit of science.
So goes python control in the Everglades, a painstaking, around-the-clock slog against a voracious, foreign snake species that has established a stronghold in this watery wilderness and put native wildlife at risk.
Critters that pythons find most delectable -- raccoons, possums, muskrats and native cotton rats -- are already under attack, as are birds such as the house wren, pied-billed grebe, white ibis and limpkin.
Scientists also worry that these reptiles, which have been known to grow as long as eight metres, may soon start to feast on endangered native species.
A decade ago, Snow and Oberhofer spent their days reintroducing rare, native birds to the pinelands and monitoring "indicator'' species, such as wading birds, alligators, bald eagles, panthers. Then, in the late '90s, pythons began turning up.
Pet owners were releasing their giant, unwanted snakes in and around the park. But convincing the public that pythons are a danger to this otherworldly mosaic of marshes, sloughs, marl prairies and shadowy hummocks was, and still is, difficult.
"It's a now-or-never thing,'' Oberhofer says. "We still have a chance, with the python's numbers being so limited, to do something. But if we let this go, we don't know how far the pythons will migrate, how much they will reproduce.''
In February 2004, tourists at the Pa-hay-okee Overlook watched, stunned, as a python wrapped itself around an alligator, which countered by rolling over and grabbing the snake in its mouth and swimming off. And then, last fall, the carcasses of a four-metre python and a two-metre gator that had squared off were found later floating in a marsh, the gator's tail and hind legs protruding from the split-open gut of the python.
"Sometimes,'' says Snow, "pythons swallow things they shouldn't.''
The Burmese python, one of the six biggest snakes, does not possess fangs and is not venomous. Rather, it is a sit-and-wait ambush hunter of the first order. Typically, it bites prey with six rows of needle-sharp, back-curving teeth, which dig deeper when its target tries to pull away. It then coils itself around its victim, squeezes the life out of it, and swallows it whole. Its hinged jaws enable the snake to open its mouth wide enough to accommodate humans.
In the wild, pythons often reach six metres in length and weigh more than 90 kilograms.
By Snow's count, 154 pythons have been removed in and around the Everglades through the first 11 months of this year, up markedly from the 95 caught in 2005, 70 in 2004, and 23 in 2003.
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