In the Everglades, humans are battling invasive Burmese pythons—literally. To mitigate the impact of the invasive serpents, licensed and recreational snake trappers are finding and removing them. And this guy just caught a big one.
On a recent outing, Mike Kimmel, who is well-known for hunting invasive iguanas and goes by the moniker “Python Cowboy,” encountered an “absolute monster” of a python. He shared the whole story of the outing in a YouTube video.
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The expedition is pretty innocuous at first. Kimmel and his buddy drive around the Everglades with little success finding pythons. They quickly catch and release two native snakes—a green water snake and a northern water snake. Then they clean up some trash and decide to head home. That’s when they happen upon the big python.
“Yes, sir. She is a good one,” he says as he grabs the snake’s tail. “Hell yes!”
Kimmel slips once while pulling the snake’s tail and exclaims about its strength as it tries to wriggle free. Eventually, he manages to grab it behind the head and drag it to the road. See the epic struggle for yourself below.
Off camera, Kimmel humanely dispatched the snake, which he estimated was 16 feet long. “People always ask me if I think we’re going to fix the python problem,” says Kimmel. “That’s a tough question to answer. I don’t think we’ll ever completely eradicate them. The Everglades is 1.5 million acres of impenetrable swamp…But I do believe management is not only possible, but it’s also crucial. We cannot just sit here and let these snakes take over.”
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