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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

NEWS BUSTERS (Washington, DC) 24 February 08 Global Warming Will Cause Giant Snakes to Take Over America (Noel Sheppard is an economist, business owner, and Associate Editor of NewsBusters. NewsBusters, a project of the Media Research Center (MRC), the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.)
NewsBusters has on numerous occasions reported how media are trying to frighten Americans into radically altering their lives or else suffer irreparable harm at the hands of the liberal bogeyman global warming.
At times in the past couple of years, the scare tactics have been akin to a 1950s horror movie, including somewhat hysterically a film being released wherein oil workers in Alaska were actually killed by Mother Nature supposedly rising up to defend herself from climate change.
On Wednesday, USA Today added giant snakes to the equation, using the frightening imagery of Burmese pythons -- which can grow in size to 20 feet and 250 pounds -- roaming America if citizens don't immediately change their wicked carbon dioxide emitting ways:
As climate change warms the nation, giant Burmese pythons could colonize one-third of the USA, from San Francisco across the Southwest, Texas and the South and up north along the Virginia coast, according to U.S. Geological Survey maps released Wednesday.
[...]
Two federal agencies - the USGS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - are investigating the range of nine invasive snakes in Florida, concerned about the danger they now pose to endangered species. The agencies are collecting data to aid in the control of these populations.
They examined Burmese pythons first and, based on where they live in Asia, estimated where they might live here. One map shows where the pythons could live today, an area that expands when scientists use global warming models for 2100.
"We were surprised by the map. It was bigger than we thought it was going to be," says Gordon Rodda, zoologist and lead project researcher. "They are moving northward, there's no question."
Of course, late in the article we find that the problem isn't actually global warming. It's that people are buying these snakes as pets, and then abandoning them:
If federal officials had to worry only about Florida, it would be "decades" before the pythons move into other states, Rodda says. But people keep dumping pythons they don't want into the wild. "We just learned about some that had been released in Arkansas," he says.
Hmmm. So, maybe officials ought to do more to prevent these snakes from being brought into the country, and stop using them as a political tool to advance climate alarmism:
In Florida, they eat bobcats, deer, alligators, raccoons, cats, rats, rabbits, muskrats, possum, mice, ducks, egrets, herons and song birds. They grab with their mouth to anchor the prey, then coil around the animal and crush it to death before eating it whole.
If you see one, don't attempt to engage it. Leave the area, note the location and notify the authorities.
Anyone question why so many people feel those that advance the global warming myth should be called climate alarmists?
Somewhat comically, within hours of this article being published, as Rush Limbaugh discussed the New York Times hit piece on John McCain, he referred to people in the drive-by media as snakes.
As such, Americans indeed should be very afraid, not of pythons roaming the planet, but of irresponsible journalists that know absolutely nothing about science advancing this myth by using such disgraceful scare tactis.
Global Warming Will Cause Giant Snakes to Take Over America

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?

WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL (Madison) 25 February 08 Snow over snakes any day (Bill Wineke)
Let's look on the bright side: At least we aren't being overrun by pythons.
We may be still shoveling out from Monday's snowstorm, still slipping on last week's ice and still bailing living rooms inundated by leaks from the "ice dams" that lurk on our roofs, but if there's one thing this damnable Wisconsin winter doesn't have is pythons.
Not so in other parts of the country.
USA Today reports "giant Burmese pythons could colonize one-third of the U.S., from San Francisco across the Southwest, Texas and the South and up north along the Virginia coast."
It seems that idiots in Florida -- or idiot guests of that state -- have imported pythons as pets and, then, when the snakes, which can reach a length of 20 feet and a weight of 250 pounds, became a nuisance, just let them go in the swamps. Now, there are breeding colonies of pythons in Florida and wildlife officials report they have learned some of the snakes have also been dumped in Arkansas.
If there are loose pythons in Florida and in Arkansas, how much do you want to bet they have cousins in other Southern states?
But not in Wisconsin. Our climate is not similar to that of Southeast Asia, where the pythons originated. We may have snow. We may have sleet. We may even have voracious mosquitoes in the summer. But we do not have a feral python community and are not likely to acquire one anytime soon.
Florida is a different state. In Florida, the wild pythons are competing with alligators for prey. In fact, you may recall that a few years ago wildlife folk discovered a python that died while trying to swallow an alligator. If global warming becomes a reality, much of the South will be like Florida.
Think about this the next time you start to feel jealous of all your wealthy friends who are vacationing in Florida. Do you really want to be in a place where you have to choose between being eaten by an alligator or by a giant snake?
Actually, the pythons are not supposed to be dangerous to humans, confining their diets normally to rodents, chickens and lesser creatures. That would be a comforting thought if it weren't for the prior story about a python trying to eat an alligator.
No, it is better to remain in Wisconsin. It is better to shovel snow. It is better to curse the subzero cold. It is even better to slide into a ditch and join the rest of suffering Wisconsin humanity.
The one thing you won't have to worry about as you sit in that ditch is whether you might be swallowed by a python.
Snow over snakes any day