Jeff Fobb freezes as he tries to sort through the noises rising from the swamp of the Everglades: the beating wings of an ibis, the scurrying of a lizard, the much louder splash of an alligator lowering itself into the water or, the sound he really wants to hear, the rustle of a large python in tall grass.
“It sounds sort of like the wind, but more steady,” Fobb said.
He combs through the grass with a long metal hook. No snakes, but the pythons are out there, somewhere, and Florida is looking to men like Fobb, a ponytailed former marine who heads the Miami-Dade fire department’s venom bureau, to hunt down and kill them.
Armed with a hunting knife, insect repellent and mesh laundry bags into which he is hoping to bundle his prey, Fobb is on the frontline of a new push by Florida to try to contain a population explosion of alien intruders that is threatening the ecological balance of the Everglades and frightening the public in surrounding farmlands.
The state is in the midst of its first-ever open hunting season on pythons. Authorities say the hunt, which runs until the middle of this month, could be a last chance to get rid of the snakes before they do irreparable harm to some of the endangered species in the Everglades.
Nobody knows how many pythons or other large constrictors are on the loose, or exactly how they got out into the wild. Estimates run as high as 100,000. State wildlife officials are hoping a significant slice of the population froze to death in February’s extreme cold spell, but they admit their evidence is spotty.
Conservationists and wildlife officials believe the snakes are the offspring of unwanted pets that were dumped in the wild. Hardin thinks they may originate from a breeding farm that was torn apart by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, flinging snakes through the air.
What is clear, however, is that they are an increasing public menace. Full-grown, a Burmese python is 90kg of sinuous muscle and can overpower any animal in the Everglades.
According to a food pyramid of the python diet put together by Everglades National Park, pythons have eaten animals ranging from raccoons to blue herons to alligator.
They are multiplying: A mature female python lays up to 100 eggs a year. Fobb’s Venom Bureau responded to 90 snake emergencies last year, mostly from pythons.
And they may be on the move. A study by the US geological survey suggested the Burmese python could begin moving out of south Florida, potentially even to other US states.
The hunt is the latest attempt in a series of efforts by government agencies and environmental organizations over the last decade to try to limit their numbers.
In 2008, state authorities brought in a law requiring python owners to implant their snakes with a computerized chip. This year, the administration of US President Barack Obama proposed a ban on the import or transport within states of the Burmese python and eight other large constrictors.
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