Rumble In The Everglades

every morning i wake up to 99.5 FM, the wolf, a country music station. i tend to set my alarm to go off at the hour or half hour. i do this so i can catch the weather, traffic, and and a tid bit of news. this morning the tidbit of news was about a 13 feet long burmese python that attempted to eat a 6 feet long alligator in the florida everglades. i've read a couple of different articles on the subject. one article says that the python ate more than it's body could stand and it just ripped apart. another article suggest that the gator put up such a struggle that it ripped out of the python. my money is on the alligator ripping out since it's tail isn't stuck in the front end of the snake. never-the-less, both were a casualty of this battle.


the burmese python is a nonnative species to the florida everglades. this non poisonous snake was introduced to the everglades by snake owners who didn't want their once cute pet anymore. over the years as more and more pythons have been discarded and have successfully reproduced. park rangers have captured 150 pythons over the last two years. between this and the four alligator/python conflicts that have been documented. biologist are starting to wonder how negatively this will effect the everglade ecological system. biologist had hoped that the alligators would be able to control the python population, but they have found that the documented struggles between the two have gone both ways. sometimes the alligator wins and sometimes the python wins.

with this new predator in the everglades it is hard to predict what will happen if we do not help regulate or destroy the python population in the everglades. there is a possibility that with this added predator, which is growing in population, will thin out the food source of the native alligator as well as it's self. if this were to happen they might start migrating into more populated areas in search of food, and an adult python is a threat to to humans. especially children.