PYTHONS ON THE LOOSE : Largest of Florida's pet pests invade Everglades

PYTHONS ON THE LOOSE : Largest of Florida's pet pests invade Everglades

Burmese pythons are particularly popular for about $40 wholesale or just under $100 in a pet store, at about the size of a ruler. You feed a little one mice, and then rats, and then as it continues to grow in size and appetite, you offer up chickens and rabbits, the experts say.

You watch your snakeling graduate in about three years to a length of 10 or 12 feet, or longer. Ultimately it can reach 20 feet, and the heavyweights tip the scales at about 300 pounds, and live to about 25 years. Their defacatory production is renowned.

And while you're raising your young python, plan on accommodating its living needs, which make a teenager's look mild. At first, you can put it in a cage. Then you can put it in a very big cage. And finally, you'd just better give it an entire room, or the guest wing of your home. And if you get tired of feeding it four or five big rabbits at a time, go ahead and provide a small pig (or maybe an unruly child or, well, you get the picture).

Burmese pythons are breeding like rabbits.

Some wildlife biologists estimate their numbers in the park now at about 5,000, most of them wild-born offspring of animals from the pet trade either purposely released or escaped from owners after major storms...

"We had laws to control lions, tigers and poisonous snakes, the class one animals, but we didn't have a category to take care of invasive species - pythons, monitor lizards and iguanas, invasive rats down in the keys - things that are and can be super destructive to Florida's environment," ...

Just how destructive is anybody's guess.

"The devastating effect of the python is probably on the bird populations, young nesting birds,"

(Excerpt) Read more at florida-weekly.com ...