A Slithering Un-Success: No Pythons Caught During Snake Hunt

The python hunt ends Saturday

Florida's first python hunting season ends Saturday with no reptiles being reported captured and killed, wildlife officials said Friday.

That's a staggering statement considering ecologists were saying Burmese and Rock pythons were well on their way to world domination, starting with the Everglades.

The season opened March 8 for anyone with a hunting license who paid a $26 permit fee to hunt down the nonnative reptiles on state-managed lands around the Everglades in South Florida. In the first snake round up last year, hunters found and killed 52 pythons.

But trappers haven't hauled in any of the enormous man eaters officials expected to find flourishing in the wild.

Are rednecks keeping the snugly cold-blooded killers as pets? Or maybe evolution has set in and the reptiles have morphed into reality TV stars (there are plenty of those to hunt in Miami these days).

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the state's unseasonably cold winter weather is believed to have killed up to 50 percent of the pythons.

"It hammered them," said Scott Hardin, exotic species coordinator.

Hardin said nine out of 10 pythons that scientists had been tracking with radio collars in Everglades National Park apparently died from the weather.

Hunters were also allowed to kill Indian and African rock pythons, and green anacondas and Nile monitor lizards.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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