The primary python Siewe caught was over 10 toes tall. “I caught it on my own, sporting flip flops,” Siewe mentioned, noting that she discovered it in the midst of a Florida freeway.
She disoriented the snake by putting a pillowcase over its head, then put the snake within the trunk of her Camry.
The biggest python Siewe captured was 17 toes 3 inches tall and weighed 110 kilos.
“I jumped on her in a ditch by the aspect of the highway, all 17 toes from her,” Siewe mentioned. “She had the most important snake head I’ve ever seen. It was an actual battle of power.
Amongst those that will face Siewe on this yr’s Florida Python Problem: fellow skilled python hunter and defending champion of the problem, Dusty Crum. Florida native Crum, 42, caught the longest skilled class python within the competitors final yr, catching a 16ft python. In 2016, he was a part of a three-man crew that took the problem honors, catching 33 pythons.
“Quite a lot of it’s luck, however it’s additionally about being in the fitting place on the proper time,” Crum mentioned. “It is anyone’s recreation.”
Snake hunters use a wide range of tools to do their job, from snake hooks to particular carrying baggage to an array of lights that may spot reptiles at nighttime of night time.
To arrange for this yr’s problem, Crum makes use of its rigorously curated assortment of snake-catching applied sciences.
“Relating to problem, it is weapons,” Crum mentioned. “I attempt to use all my tools: small geo-trackers, quads. I’ve swamp buggies, monster vehicles with large tires on them. We equip them with lights on and I can entry locations inaccessible to most of the people.
Python searching, Crum and Siewe mentioned, will not be for the faint of coronary heart. Though pythons usually are not toxic, they’re highly effective and identified to chew.
“They’ve a whole bunch of enamel, and once they chew you, it is like needle sticks,” Crum mentioned. “The worst factor that may occur is when the tooth breaks off and will get caught in you, and it will get contaminated.”
Siewe mentioned she had been bitten too many occasions to rely. “A 14-footer bit me on the hand. I used to be bitten within the buttocks, within the calf. Fortunately, I wasn’t bitten within the face.
Like Crum, Siewe says she is engaged on reusing elements of the pythons she catches. “I take advantage of the leather-based to make Apple Watch straps,” she mentioned.
Each Crum and Siewe say they’re “right here to win” with regards to this yr’s problem.
Neither plan to sleep a lot throughout the competitors, as pythons are nocturnal, which implies the very best time to hunt is late at night time.
But, they mentioned, the actual focus of the problem has much less to do with the person victories they could obtain, and much more to do with the larger trigger they combat and hunt for.
“It isn’t trophy searching or sport searching,” says Crum. “It is an environmental hunt. It is the hunt to avoid wasting the environment. It is a particular feeling when it is man in opposition to beast, preventing for the surroundings.
No people in america have been killed by pythons, however many pets have been, and wildlife officers worry pythons might destroy whole populations of native Florida species if they don’t seem to be stopped. Among the many mammals of the Everglades that the pythons decimate: marsh rabbits, raccoons, foxes, deer and bobcats.
“The Burmese python is without doubt one of the largest snakes on the earth, able to reaching 20 toes in size, and resulting from our local weather, pythons are in a position to thrive in Florida preying on our wildlife,” mentioned Kirkland. “In elements of Florida, as much as 95% of furbearer populations have disappeared.
Pythons even eat Florida alligators.
“Pythons are generalists,” mentioned McKayla Spencer, Florida Interagency Python Administration Coordinator. “They eat something. »
Pythons first appeared within the Everglades within the Seventies, possible following the discharge of a pet snake into the wild, however the inhabitants did not explode till the Nineteen Nineties.
That is when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida, destroying, amongst different issues, a number of python breeding services. Kirkland mentioned there isn’t a definitive proof that the destruction of animal farms is chargeable for the explosion in Florida’s python inhabitants. “However that did not assist,” he admitted.
There is no such thing as a official estimate of the variety of pythons in Florida, resulting from their stealthy nature.
“They’re very arduous to seek out,” Spencer mentioned. “For each python we discover, there are 99 extra.”
Increasingly, Spencer mentioned, pythons are exhibiting up in folks’s yards and boats, because the snakes are actually swallowing increasingly more territory in Florida.
That is the place Human Hunters are available.
“I’ve at all times had this obsessive fascination with snakes and reptiles ever since I used to be little and my dad taught me the way to catch fish,” Siewe mentioned. “I believed, ‘Why is not this ardour [for] puppies or kittens or one thing regular? It isn’t–it’s snakes.
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