Epic python battle? Big gator finally ends up with even greater snake in its mouth

Editor’s be aware: Bill Kearney of the South Florida Sun Sentinel lately headed out to the Everglades, when the sudden occurred. 

It was the seventh alligator we’d seen on the two-mile bike path by means of the sawgrass swamp of Everglades National Park. But this one was totally different. Very totally different.

In the alligator’s mouth, and draped to his facet and twisted beneath his chin was an invasive Burmese python — an enormous one, thick, rotund, in all probability twice so long as I’m tall.

Were they combating? Still struggling?

As my 4-year-old son and I dismounted from our bikes, and I walked nearer, however not too shut, they had been immobile. Maybe they had been each useless.

The alligator was about 8 ft lengthy, and the python actually longer, possibly 12 ft, wrapped, folded and chewed, and half submerged.

They had been caught in what seemed just like the aftermath of an epic swamp battle alongside the 15-mile bike path loop at Shark Valley, in Everglades National Park.

I’d come right here as a result of my son and I had been cooped up in the home by means of 4 straight days of rain and 25 mph winds. But at this time the solar was out, and so had been the gators.

In the 2 miles of motorcycle path that we’d coated, we’d seen these half a dozen gators basking on the shoulder, together with anhingas and turtles and gorgeous nice blue herons as nonetheless as bushes.

And now, what had been hypothetical — that large snakes are invading Florida’s ecosystems and hiding in plain sight — abruptly turned viscerally actual.

Eventually the gator opened its eyes for a second and shut them, nonetheless alive, however immobile, and laying awkwardly as if injured. A number of flies lighted upon the snake. Other bikers got here by and gasped. A tram full of holiday makers from Europe and Asia took footage and certainly questioned about this unusual place.

Three rangers got here out to see as nicely. One mentioned the gator seemed spent.

When the wind shifted all of us obtained a whiff of one thing useless — possibly the snake?

The thriller of the useless python

But what actually occurred? Had there been a livid combat, the python wrapping across the gator’s heavy torso and the gator thrashing the snake till it went limp, or had the gator merely scavenged one thing already useless?

Would the gator, who seemed very a lot worse-for-wear, survive the evening? Would one other gator come alongside and steal his prize?

To discover out, I spoke with park biologists Kevin Donmoyer and Mark Parry, who work with each pythons and alligators.

Donmoyer, who coordinates the park’s invasive animal management, mentioned that the snakes are so good at hiding that the possibilities of seeing one alongside the bike path in broad daylight are close to zero. In truth, seeing one in an alligator’s mouth is likely to be the one approach to spot one through the day.

Donmoyer manages a staff {of professional} python hunters to cruise the park’s roads at evening, when pythons are extra energetic, and use spotlights to search out them within the underbrush or shallow water. They euthanize no matter snakes they catch. He mentioned the Shark Valley bike path is likely one of the extra fashionable routes.