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It seems like nearly every week there's a news story that makes us all shake our heads and say, "Florida, man..."
But the thing is, even if Florida were the most norm-core state in the union, that wouldn't change the fact that the place is LITERALLY RIDDLED WITH ACTUAL PYTHONS.
Seriously! People go here on vacation?! And buy time shares here?! On purpose?!
Not only is the ocean working overtime to swallow the place whole and people like Marco Rubio live there, but there are PYTHONS just ROAMING THE STREETS. Humans think Florida is theirs but these pythons are out here like "LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT ME. I'M THE CAPTAIN NOW."
Which is why Miami County is preparing to go to Congress and be like, "Uhhhhh help please? Seriously, mayday? Like 911 guys THERE ARE PYTHONS EVERYWHERE OH GOD."
The Miami-Dade County Commission recently brought a resolution urging the state Legislature and Congress to provide more funding for capturing the snakes, which are an invasive species and have been decimating the animal population of the Everglades for years.
So much so that they're wreaking havoc on the ecosystem. As wildlife trapper John Hammond, who recently caught a record-breaking 18-foot python, told Orlando's WOFL Fox 35:
"They've eaten-up the marsh rabbits, the small mice and stuff, and everything that normally eats them is impacted because they can't. The food chain is not there anymore."
In a desperate attempt to reverse, or at least slow, this horror show, the South Florida Water Management District and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission has been paying hunters to capture pythons, with some 1,900 Burmese pythons caught since March 2017.
But if the mere thought of 1,900 snakes of any kind makes you want to scream until you die like it does me, just know that all that hunting has done basically nothing, because Burmese pythons, who grow up to 23 feet long and weigh as much as 200 pounds, can lay 50 to 100 eggs at once. So repopulation is no problem whatsoever!
Anyway is that gif of Bugs Bunny sawing Florida off the map a thing that we can actually do in real life? Asking for myself, a person who has to audibly tell himself "There's not a snake in the toilet, there's not a snake in the toilet" every time he goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
And especially after Hammond's record-breaking catch, folks on social media are not having it with these pythons...
Anyway, as we head into the worst of the winter months, consider this your reminder that there are lots of warm, sunny places to repair to that don't have 18-foot snakes that "have been known to consume animals as large as deer whole." Happy New Year!