By CARL HIAASEN
Lock up the kids, put a GPS on your Jack Russell and make way at the top of the food chain.
The killer pythons are here.
Visitors to South Florida recently clicked on the television to see an X-ray of a 12-footer that had eaten a rotund Siamese cat named Frances.
It was the lead story on the local news, hot on the heels of an incident in which another large python exploded after devouring a six-foot alligator in Everglades National Park. The grisly photos of that gastronomical Vesuvius received front-page play all over the world.
Finally the word is getting out that pythons are amok in the Sunshine State. Will this scare anyone away? We can only hope.
Shark attacks, gator maulings, West Nile-oozing mosquitoes, flesh-eating bacteria, killer hurricanes every three or four weeks -- none of these threats have significantly dented Florida's insane growth rate.
An infestation of ravenous pythons, however, might deter potential newcomers to our state. Large mammal-eating snakes trigger a special primal fear in our otherwise cocky species.
Sharks cruise and gators lurk, but at least we know where they hang out. Snakes, on the other hand, go wherever they please. They swim, they slither, they dig and they climb.
Humans are as stunningly ignorant about reptiles as they are intrigued by them. About 144,000 Burmese pythons were imported by the pet trade into the United States last year, and many of those will either escape or eventually be freed by their owners.
That's why Florida is crawling with the beasts today. Most people who buy them as babies are clueless about how fast they grow, and how much space they require.
As one who owned snakes for years, I steered clear of exotic constrictors. Sharing a house with a 90-pound carnivorous predator required a deeper personal commitment than I was willing to make, not to mention a steady supply of full-grown rabbits.
Friends up North who've been reading about our python plague have asked if they eat humans. The same question, I suspect, is being worriedly pondered at the breakfast table in many South Florida households.
The answer is yes, though rarely. In one documented case, a teenager was devoured by a 31-foot reticulated python in Indonesia. Ten years ago, a 23-footer killed and tried to swallow a worker at a rubber plantation in Kuala Lumpur.
More recently, Internet snake freaks eagerly disseminated a graphic photograph purporting to show a man's corpse being removed from a dead anaconda in South America. Some experts believe the photo was faked.
In any case, it's important to remember that snakes are primitive and undiscerning. They tend to eat whatever is available, sometimes without regard for proportions or digestibility. Witness the inflated ambitions of the now-famous Everglades python that expired after gobbling the alligator.
Tragically, there have been many cases of hungry pet snakes behaving like hungry wild ones. In 1984, an 11-month-old baby was strangled in bed by the family's 10-foot pet reticulated python. This happened in Iowa, not the ideal climate for an active tropical reptile.
A New York man was killed in 1996 while trying to feed a live chicken to his 13-foot python, which mistook him for supper. A Colorado python owner suffered the same fate, his pet wrapping around him so tightly that it took a team of firefighters to pry the coils from his body.
In 1999, a 3-year-old Illinois boy was choked to death by his parents' pet African rock python. Two years later, an eight-year-old Pennsylvania girl was critically injured by a 10-foot Burmese -- one of five big snakes kept at her home -- which wound around her neck and wouldn't let go.
Obviously a multitude of good reasons exist for parting company with an unmanageable python. The best way is to take it to a veterinarian, or give it to an experienced reptile keeper.
Simply opening the car door and letting the snake go might be convenient, but it's also profoundly stupid.
Pythons have few natural enemies, Miami being short on wild jaguars and tigers. The small python you set free today could be inhaling your neighbor's prize parrot next year.
While eradication efforts are underway in the Everglades, some herpetologists believe it's too late. They say the pythons, which breed prolifically, are here to stay.
As a public service, dire warnings should be issued to tourists and all those considering a permanent family move to Florida. Perhaps it will do some good, but who knows.
It was 16 years ago that I first wrote about the python invasion, after a 20-footer and a 17-footer were captured in local suburbs where they'd been feasting on raccoons and domestic pets.
The news didn't seem to frighten a soul. People kept arriving, and so did the snakes.
Now we're overrun with both, setting the stage for a classic Darwinian duel. Having seen big pythons in action, I definitely wouldn't bet against them.
I love snakes.. We are going to be getting another here soon... hopefully.
:-3
