Dancing with gators.

[DrVette 0]

I was actually in negotiations with the the Federal Department of Wild Life about taking hunting trips to FLA right before i found i had cancer. Target Berms and Retics. I think they also have a problem with green Anacondas...There were several breeders that vanished after hurricanes in the area. Anacondas are slower but i think they will become the biggest problem in several more years.

 

Maybe i should look into cash for hunting this problem??? My current situation blows chunks.

 

Actually a part on the interior??? It is fuzzy??

 

The Anaconda problem will start with yellow stripes then about 4-6 years later fall to the bigger stronger Greens. These can reach 20+ feet in length...but it takes them a a LOOOONNNGGG while to mature to that point. That is when the Glades will reach a new equilibrium. The Berrms and Retics will be food at that point.

[mikechell 0]

I hope you aren't thinking you could solve the constrictor problem in Southern Florida, DrVette. Florida holds several "hunts" each year ... and most of the participants never even find one.

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

Here's a bit of information on the python problem that may not have seen daylight (yet). I'm predicting that they're just plain un-stoppable and will cause irreparable damage to the eco-system..... The Park is roughly 90 miles by 90 miles -the southern boundaries extend across the water all the way down to Islamorada but there's only one road in the entire Park (the road down to Flamingo, 38 miles long).

 

Once those snakes spread out a bit into an area that's just like where they come from.... You get the idea (and they'd pretty much spread out long before folks ever knew they were there.....). To top if off the Park has not allowed either one of the "Hunts" to go inside the Park -where most of the snakes are.... To put it mildly pythons are quiet, slow moving, death at night for any small warm blooded animals near them - and that is having disastrous consequences for every other predator needing enough food to successfully raise their babies.... To top if off they give birth to as many as 100 babies each year - each one ready to hunt even though they're pretty small at first...

 

I first noted a problem just after hurricane Wilma (almost 11 years ago now...). I was used to seeing 10 to 50 small swamp rabbits along the roadside each morning before the sun came up as I was towing my skiff down to Flamingo (each morning that drive is usually pretty quiet with no other traffic around, I looked forward to every wildlife sighting...)... After the storm there were no rabbits anywhere at all, period. At first I figured the hurricane had wiped out a generation of young rabbits but that the population would soon recover. I never saw a single rabbit after that. Almost a year later I talked with one of the Park biologists, mentioned the disappearance of a prime forage specie, and asked him to look into it. A few months later I heard back that none of the Park biologists had any info on their disappearance... A few years later news filtered out that biologists were finding an occasional python near Flamingo... Shortly after that a sensational video surfaced showing a dead alligator with a dead python and then the concern became widespread.... Yep, pythons everywhere in the 'Glades and it was going to be tough to do much about it since they're so well camouflaged that you almost have to step on one before you see them in daylight and they do most of their hunting at night... Those much publicized "hunts" are pretty bogus since they're not hunting where the snakes are....

 

Fast forward to the present and here's the situation.... the road down to Flamingo is nice and clean each day -the only roadkill you'll ever see are birds or reptiles - no warm blooded critters at all.... Compare that to my first twenty years of driving down that road where you had to be super cautious before dawn to avoid hitting raccoons, opossums, rabbits, the occasional bobcat, etc.... My guess is that every predator in the Park is in dire straits since their food is being taken by the pythons - who have no natural enemies at present (that will change over the years but not in my lifetime...). As foxes, bobcats, hawks, eagles and other predators food situation goes south they'll have to re-locate. Any that remain will really struggle to raise babies since they're not going to be able to find enough food... As the snakes work through the small game they'll eventually begin moving out of the 'Glades in their search for food. They're already being found in the upper Keys - and have spread westward to within 30 or 40 miles of Naples and eastward towards Miami... Yep, eventually folks in the urban areas will begin losing their cats and small dogs to them - any small child won't survive an encounter with one either... A big python has the ability to kill a grown man - but it won't happen quickly at all....

 

That's where we stand at present. I've only seen a few of them so far (they're mostly land critters but will cross any waters they come to... Every effort to date has failed to control them and the Park isn't interested at all in allowing anyone (other than a small few licensed snake hunters) to go after them - and still no firearms allowed at all.. If there were a substantial bounty on them I'd consider hunting them myself - but only in winter when they should be relatively easy to find while they're out sunning themselves.... By the way we occasionally hear talk of anacondas - but no one's ever found one in south Florida that I know of - the Burmese python and the African Rock python are bad enough....

 

Feel free to pass this info along to anyone interested. I'm dismayed by the situation and don't see any quick fix at all. To solve an argument scientists affiliated with the Park set up an experiment with rabbits a year or two ago now. They gathered 16 swamp rabbits from an area that still had them, collared them with GPS trackers and released them along the road into the Park. Within a week to ten days every tracker quit moving - when they recovered them every one was inside a snake's stomach.....

[Bimini15 0]

Well... thank you Captain for those uplifting words that bring cheer to our souls... After the break... Can we survive the upcoming zombie apocalypse? The answer is NO!... Right after this...

 

Seriously though, I love to hear your first hand reports.

 

I also think that Nature always ends up finding some sort of balance and these kinds of things in the end are not as bad as we now think they will be, although they do bring about "new normals". Many of the snakes will be food for big gators as well. At some point someone will figure out a way to exploit commercially the newly found Burmese population and there will be a demand for them. Plus, public perception will definitely change when the first human gets hugged by one of them. But there is no way we are getting rid of them completely.

 

I am not saying it is all well and good. I am just saying that Nature does well covering our screw ups, no matter how big they get.

[mikechell 0]

At some point someone will figure out a way to exploit commercially the newly found Burmese population and there will be a demand for them.

I think a new line of snake meat fast food restaurants would be pretty cool !!!

[Bimini15 0]

Burmese python, the other other white meat.

[mikechell 0]

Subway has their $5 foot long sub sandwich ... McPython has the $10 yard long snake sandwich!

[Kudu 0]

They make nice boots and belts.

[DrVette 0]

I hope you aren't thinking you could solve the constrictor problem in Southern Florida, DrVette. Florida holds several "hunts" each year ... and most of the participants never even find one.

Solve it...HELL NO! but i am not your normal hunter when it comes to snakes...Ask the Cliff house about what i do. I find the source of the snakes and kill back till i have cleaned them...The Cliff House took me 9 months and about 80 removed. Those were Prairie Rattlers from a den just under the building.

FLA will be MUCH harder. But they were talking close to 50K for 6-8 months...

[mikechell 0]

LOL You are amazing !!! You ARE the snake whisperer !!!

 

I'll bet you'd be able to eradicate ALL the invasive species in, what, two years?

[WVUontheFLY 0]

Eradicating all the species that could possibly kill humans is pretty ridiculous. Also there isn't such thing as a poisonous snake, it's venomous. Poisonous = you bite it, you die, Venomous = it bites you, you die. As far as anacondas being slower than burms and retics, that is only true in travelling speed on land, but as far as water and striking speed they are just as fast and even more unpredictable. I would rather deal with a gator or croc any day over an anaconda. Noted before a 2' gator is probably not with momma any longer but they will still do a distress call and even though it may not be the original momma, as soon as a large gator hears that they will come in to protect the baby.

[mikechell 0]

... but they will still do a distress call and even though it may not be the original momma, as soon as a large gator hears that they will come in to protect the baby.

May be true ... but not in my experience. None of the little ones I've picked up ever made the call. Maybe it's the shear density of the 'gator population now days ... but little 'gators quickly become a food source for bigger ones.

One of the things "mama" 'gators have to protect against, are other 'gators trying to eat the babies. Big ones coming in response to distress calls could easily be a big one looking for an easy meal.

 

As far as the snakes being dangerous to humans ... too many people see a movie like "Anaconda" and believe it. My favorite BS scene was when the anaconda was in the tree, and snatched the man out of the air as he fell. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

When I saw that ... I still laugh when I think some people believe that !!!

[WVUontheFLY 0]

 

... but they will still do a distress call and even though it may not be the original momma, as soon as a large gator hears that they will come in to protect the baby.

May be true ... but not in my experience. None of the little ones I've picked up ever made the call. Maybe it's the shear density of the 'gator population now days ... but little 'gators quickly become a food source for bigger ones.

One of the things "mama" 'gators have to protect against, are other 'gators trying to eat the babies. Big ones coming in response to distress calls could easily be a big one looking for an easy meal.

 

As far as the snakes being dangerous to humans ... too many people see a movie like "Anaconda" and believe it. My favorite BS scene was when the anaconda was in the tree, and snatched the man out of the air as he fell. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

When I saw that ... I still laugh when I think some people believe that !!!

 

The movies like Anaconda and Lake Placid are insanely overdramatized, but I have been tagged by an anaconda out of no where and they are definitely more unpredictable in their ability to strike at random angles compared to burms and retics. I caught a gator in Lauderdale that was about 2' and it started to call and a rather large gator started to make it's way towards us, needless to say the little gator went back quickly and I didn't want anything to do with the 9-10' coming at us

[mikechell 0]

Where do you get close enough to an anaconda to get bit? I've only been able to handle one, and that was at a reptile section of a zoo.

 

I spent 14 months in Georgetown, Guyana and surrounding areas. I went looking for snakes when ever I got the free time. Never found a single one. Even in their "home territory", they are not "everywhere". Maybe we'll see a HUGE upswing of Swallow Tailed Kites ... which eat snakes ... and a new equilibrium will be reached.

[DrVette 0]

Eradicating all the species that could possibly kill humans is pretty ridiculous. Also there isn't such thing as a poisonous snake, it's venomous. Poisonous = you bite it, you die, Venomous = it bites you, you die. As far as anacondas being slower than burms and retics, that is only true in travelling speed on land, but as far as water and striking speed they are just as fast and even more unpredictable. I would rather deal with a gator or croc any day over an anaconda. Noted before a 2' gator is probably not with momma any longer but they will still do a distress call and even though it may not be the original momma, as soon as a large gator hears that they will come in to protect the baby.

Sorry, When i said slower i meant in how many years they take to grow. And yeah i am bad about saying poisonous instead of venomous.

 

But they were looking for wranglers. I think they only nabbed a few out of all the advertising they were doing. But i wasn't interested in moving them. What you need is to find where they lay their eggs(this a trick for tracking pythons not live-bearers). They are very picky about that.

So you pick several areas of about 10-15 acres and map them hard. In several months i will have found most if not all in that area. Could i clear a state...maybe if i lived a thousand years and they didn't move. LOL that was funny Mike.

 

I still think the Anacondas will become the real problem in a few more years. When they hit 15-20 feet they are very old, wise, fast, and nasty. Floridians haven't reported as many as i would expect though. I was hoping to find anacondas while there to prove out my hypothesis. But retics and burms...shoot on sight. My snake fighting days are over...i just have a very tame 6 foot Madagascar Ground Boa called George...When she passes i will never have another snake.