![]() Most people who think that they spot a skunk ape tend to keep the news to themselves for fear of sounding crazy, and until recently they felt the same way when they caught sight of a strange green snake big enough to swallow a Great Dane. This is, after all, the home of the legendary skunk ape. Those locals see a lot of other weird things out there in the swamp. It weighs around 22.8 feet (7.9 meters) and is the longest in the world. Hanging out with other python hunters, I realized within a few days that the vast majority of pythons had been captured by locals who just happen to bump into them while doing other things. The reticulated python, which lives in South America, is the largest snake known to man. And many other invasive species were crawling around without receiving nearly as much attention. The pythons were less of a problem than the media had made them out to be. The Burmese pythons have become a well-publicized problem, but once I got down there and started spending time with the fishermen, bikers, reformed gator poachers, tour guides, smugglers, and biologists who inhabit the sparsely populated southern Glades, I found that the situation wasn’t everything it was made out to be on the evening news. ![]() I met Shealy and Scholle while I was on an expedition in February to hunt invasive Burmese pythons in the Everglades.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |