Since 2008, Tom Rahill and his grou, called the Swamp Apes, have captured at least 400 pythons. Though Rahill is a prolific hunter, he also has a day job working with computers. To hunt pythons, he uses a camera probe, a knife and his hands.
"The Everglades is a World Heritage Site. It's a international biosphere. To get to that point very clearly shows that it has a uniqueness unto the world. (weep ;-( ) The E's are a very flat geologic area that, effectively, have a river running over it. That river really is the health of the E's."
The South Florida Water Management District is tasked with protecting the health of the E's and managing the python problem.
Rory Feeney (Land Resources Bureau Chief) : They were first found in the 80's in the E's, but really became a problem after Hurricane Andrew, when several pet facilities were destroyed and also, people were buying these snakes and keeping them in their houses and eventually they become too big to maintain. You know, a six foot snake is one thing but when you have a 15-foot snake that needs to eat regularly, it becomes too much, to burdensome, so people found a place to release them, and that ecosystem in the E's is uniquely similar to their native habitat in the southeast Asian range. (Really? So after domestication (growing up in cages and homes) these guys learnt from scratch to hunt in the wild?)
Since 2000, the E's National Parks has seen a massive decrease in raccoon, possum, bobcat and rabbit populations (really? they'll tangle with bobats? Hats off then!) Pythons have been consuming up to 25 species of birds, including the endangered wood stork.
Now the bureaucrats have gotten funds for up to 25 highly trained people to go out and remove as many pythons as possible.
Rahill : "The pythons have made a significant impact, a negative impact, on the health of the ecosystem. It throws off the entire ecosystem." (man, this dude's into computers? I sure hope he don't write python code like he talks, or his kids is goin to starv)
After hours of searching, Rahill and his team spotted signs of a python.
"What is that down in there? See that?"
"Oh, it's a big shed, man. " (talking about the moulted skin)
Now, they figure out which direction the snake was going in based on that position of the moult - man, isn't the snake smart enough to figure out to shake it's dead skin up so as to not give it's bearing away?
Anyways, they go grab the thing and it's no big deal for the three of them. I say, how come? A python also has about a hundred teeth!
Jeez, the 15' female they get in this video has 61 eggs (112 pound weight). Phew! What a machine! It does all that it does while carrying that load inside its body. Man!
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