I Hate Snakes

If you’re ever feeling brave, and you want to really test your mettle, you should come down to the Florida Everglades. Somehow, the Great Swamp has become home to far too many Burmese Pythons. Well, ‘somehow’ isn’t fair. Hurricane Andrew must accept partial responsibility for blowing away an exotic pet dealer's warehouse in Homestead, Florida. Along with that consideration, up until 2012 it was legal to ship these creatures as exotic pets to the US from their native Southeast Asia. Then, the proud new owners who were unprepared for the creatures to grow up to nineteen feet (yes, 19 Feet) in length, weigh up to two hundred pounds (yessss, 200 Pounds), and can consume an alligator for dinner, got rid of them by illegally releasing them into the swamp. Brilliant.

 

 
(shudder)

Here, in surroundings that the behemoths could thrive in, they proliferated. It is estimated up to two thousand of the invasive species live in the Everglades today. Some of the small wildlife which was once so populace in the ‘glades is down by almost 95% because of those carnivorous demons spawned in hell. We Floridians used to host an annual python hunt down in those parts, but the state canceled the hunt this year. Seems they decided you need pros to catch those buggers. To the amateur hunter’s credit, those pythons are a slippery lot.

I’ve no idea what we’re going to do about the problem. Although, we can hope that snake skin boots come back in high style with a quickness.

As the famous fedora-wearing professor would say, I hate snakes. The exception being garden snakes. Or coach whips. Label them what you like, I call them rat deterrents.

Because I hate rats even more than I hate snakes.