Snake hunters catch 17-foot python they thought was an alligator: ‘It was loopy’

Weird But True

By Ben Cost

Published
Nov. 8, 2023, 12:16 p.m. ET

They’re gonna want a much bigger rope.

Another day, one other behemoth serpent rearing its head amid Florida’s Burmese python invasion.

This time, Panhandle python hunters made hiss-tory after corralling a virtually 200-pound snake — the second largest ever bagged within the state.

“Her head was the size of a football,” conservationist Mike Elfenbein informed Fox 35 News of the “surreal” seize, which occurred over the weekend within the Big Cypress National Preserve in South Florida.

The Floridian — who just isn’t an expert snake hunter — and his son, Cole, had simply met three different males looking for Burmese pythons, an invasive snake from Southeast Asia that’s now working rampant throughout the southern United States.

“We all came across this giant snake in the road at the exact same time,” recalled Elfenbein, who mentioned the snake initially regarded so huge that they thought it was an alligator.

It reportedly took all 5 folks to get the reptile underneath management.

“I had her by the head,” mentioned Elfenbein whereas recalling the expertise. “My son grabbed her by the tail. And the opposite three guys all piled on within the center.

“And with all five of us sitting on top of her, she was still literally able to lift her body off the ground and keep moving,” he added.

“It was crazy. It was crazy.”

They weren’t exaggerating their quarry’s dimension. The monster Burmese python formally measured 17-foot-2-inches lengthy and 23 inches in girth, and weighed 198 kilos, as confirmed by the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

This marks the second-heaviest snake ever caught within the Sunshine State.

The greatest was a 215-pound, 18-foot bruiser that was bagged by researchers in 2022. Meanwhile, the longest-ever Burmese python was a 19-foot behemoth caught this previous summer time in Big Cypress National Preserve.

The snake wrangler and his group didn’t catch the constrictor to stroke some nice white hunter ego, however reasonably to assist fight the plague of invasive serpents ravaging the Panhandle.

“I’m not looking to compete with anybody. I’m not a contractor,” declared Elfenbein, who plans to maintain the supersized specimen’s cranium in a show. “I’m just a guy trying to do something good.”

He could possibly be going through an uphill battle. Originally launched to Florida within the Nineteen Seventies as a part of the unique pet commerce, the Burmese python has established breeding populations within the Everglades and different elements of the state’s southern half.

The species is especially problematic because it possesses no pure predators in Florida other than people. That makes them a significant menace to the state’s birds, mammals and different native wildlife.

Despite efforts to regulate the python inhabitants — together with the annual Florida python problem wherein rivals attempt to kill as many snakes as attainable — the issue could possibly be “intractable” at this level.

“Overall eradication of pythons in southern Florida is likely impossible,” wrote researchers in a paper launched earlier this 12 months by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). “Suppression of the python population, even at local scales, will require strategic coordination of researchers, land managers, funding, public outreach, implementation of several different complimentary tools and rigorous evaluation of these tools.”