Free Republic

EUGENE, Ore. - The owner of a 10-foot-long Burmese python found on a Eugene-area road has come forward to claim it. And Lane County Animal Services says the snake owner says he plans to give the snake to someone who can care for it better. The snake story began Tuesday night when a 16-year-old driver with a learner's permit accidentally backed over the snake as he and his father tried to figure out what was in the road. Police were called and Officer Lori Barnes grabbed hold of the reptile to keep it from slithering away. A veterinarian checked the...

Nobody has killed more Burmese pythons in the Everglades than Bob Hill. Long before the state launched its new python patrol, Hill was quietly -- aside from judicious employment of a 12-gauge -- racking up a count of constrictor carcasses likely to stand for some time. The patrol has bagged six in three weeks. Hill figures he's ``dispatched'' 35 this year alone, and he's been in the dispatching business for the South Florida Water Management District since 2004. That was the first time a rattled boss rang him from the L-67, a flood-control levee deep in the Everglades. Hill, a...

Wilbur, a four-year-old tabby, was devoured after straying into a nearby garden in Brislington, Bristol, where the Burmese python was lurking. The cat's owners, Martin and Helen Wadey, heard "blood-chilling cries" and rushed to the neighbouring property to help. But after getting no reply from the house they were powerless to save Wilbur. The snake's "huge bulge" was eventually scanned and RSPCA officers confirmed that micro-chipped remains were inside. An RSPCA inspector later issued the snake's owner, Darren Bishop, with a verbal warning about appropriate housing and care requirements. Now Mr and Mrs Wade are calling for a change in...

A Burmese python, that measured more than 17-feet, was captured and destroyed in Okeechobee County on Thursday. The male snake weighed 207 pounds and measured 26 inches in diameter. The reptile did not have a microchip, which is required for it to be a pet. "The capture of this large python shows us how well these snakes can thrive in the wild and create a dangerous situation after illegal release or escape," said commission chairman Rodney Barreto. "It also illustrates why the FWC is partnering with other agencies to implement python control measures in South Florida. We will continue to...

Python attacks tiger

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. - Five months after a privately owned chimpanzee escaped his home and mauled a Stamford woman, Connecticut officials are giving owners of exotic pets a day of amnesty to turn in the illegally-owned animals at the Bridgeport Zoo. The state Department of Environmental Protection's first exotic amnesty day ends at 3 p.m. Saturday. They're hoping that people surrender anything from large felines to primates and exotic reptiles and amphibians. Officials say they'll ask about the animals' diets, medical history and temperament, but owners won't be asked their names and won't be prosecuted for owning illegal animals. It's illegal...

They emerge, improbably huge and menacing, from the fetid quagmire which they have made their home. And when these cold-blooded killers hunt, nothing is safe. Cats, dogs, deer, even the terrifying alligators that used to rule supreme in these morasses, have fallen prey to a creature that can grow to gargantuan proportions. And they will kill humans, too. Just last week, one 17ft monster strangled a two-year-old as she slept in her cot. It sounds like an urban myth, or the plot of a lurid B-movie. But this particular horror story is real. For many, too real.

A new federal program will allow snakes to be hunted in the Everglades and other US lands in south Florida. Atlanta - This just in from Washington: The Feds will not only join Florida's great snake hunt, but will expand it to include aerial surveillance and research into the lifestyles of feral Burmese pythons suspected to be lying low, yet waiting to strike, in Everglades National Park and other federal lands. Earlier this week, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) convened a state-led task force of bounty hunters to chase pythons that aren't in national parks, preserves, or refuges. On Friday...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A program to eradicate invasive pythons from Florida's Everglades began Friday with a slithering success: Trappers caught a nearly 10-footer within about an hour of setting out, a shock to even the experts. "It surprised us," said Shawn Heflick, a herpetologist who helped capture the snake Friday. "If you would have told me yesterday I was going to go out there today and that quickly find one, I would have called you a liar."

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is calling for tens of thousands of pythons believed to be in the Everglades to be hunted and killed, a proposal blasted by animal rights advocates. Nelson sent a letter on Tuesday to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, asking for permission to have deputized agents and volunteers kill as many of the snakes as possible during an organized hunt. The senator's request comes after a 2-year-old central Florida girl was strangled by an unlicensed pet python in her home.

MIAMI, Florida (NBC) -- Florida is set to declare open season on pythons. Biologists have officially declared the south Florida python population of more than 150,000 snakes "out of control" and spreading. The snakes are squeezing out native predators, and that has many worried. Florida had considered everything from using volunteers to trap them to training beagles to sniff them out. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Chairman Rodney Barreto wants action. "We're developing a plan immediately, that we will roll out, that we will allow people who are trained, supervised by us, to go out and hunt pythons and...

The Burmese python can grow longer than 20 feet, produce several dozen offspring in a litter and devour small children and pets. In North Carolina, they have a new natural enemy: the lawmaker. There could be thousands of exotic, deadly snakes slithering loose in the state with the potential to harm not just people and animals, but entire ecosystems. But the legislature is likely to give final approval next week to a bill that would restrict the ownership and prevent the escape of venomous and large constrictor snakes, as well other dangerous reptiles. The bill adds provisions to a law...

A distraught caller trying to save the life of a 2-year-old Florida girl strangled by a pet python screams "The baby's dead!" in chilling 911 tapes released in the toddler's death.Shaiunna Hare died early Wednesday morning after being attacked in her crib by the snake, which escaped from its aquarium, police said. "The baby's dead!" a sobbing caller from the house screamed to a 911 dispatcher. "Our stupid snake got out in the middle of the night and strangled the baby." Authorities did not identify the caller and removed the person's name from the recording. "She got out of the...

A Florida toddler was strangled on Wednesday by a 12-foot (3.6-meter) albino Burmese python that escaped from a holding tank in the girl's home, authorities said. The pet's owner, a boyfriend of the child's mother, found the python on top of the 2-year-old girl in the rural community of Oxford, about 50 miles northwest of Orlando. The python apparently broke free in the night, entered the girl's bedroom and attacked her. "This is very rare," Patricia Behnke of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission told reporters. The owner stabbed the snake when he found it on the child but she...

A 12-foot pet Burmese python has broken out of its aquarium and strangled to death a two-year-old girl in her Florida bedroom. Police said Shaunia Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived at her home in Oxford, 50 miles northwest of Orlando. The albino snake had been owned by Charles Darnell, the boyfriend of Shaunia’s mother, who found it in the toddler's bedroom, wrapped around her. Mr Darnell, 32, stabbed the snake until he was able to pry her away, but was too late to save her. Mr Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, the Florida Fish...

OXFORD, Fla. -- A two-year-old girl was strangled by a python at her family's home in Oxford. It is unknown whether the snake was a pet and how the child came in contact with the animal. Pythons can kill by wrapping themselves around a human. Whit Gibbons, a professor of ecology at the University of Georgia, told the Associated Press that "A human is just another prey item to a python -- especially a small human. "A 20-foot python, if it grabbed one of us, would bite us and then within just, instantly, seconds, it would be wrapped all the...

The population of Burmese pythons in Florida's Everglades may have grown to as many as 150,000 as the non-native snakes make a home and breed in the fragile wetlands, officials said on Thursday. Wildlife biologists say the troublesome invaders -- dumped in the Everglades by pet owners who no longer want them -- have become a pest and pose a significant threat to endangered species like the wood stork and Key Largo woodrat. "They eat things that we care about," said Skip Snow, an Everglades National Park biologist, as he showed a captured, 15-foot (4.6-meter) Burmese python to U.S. Interior...

STUNNED dinner party guests lost their appetites as they watched a huge python crack the bones and swallow an adult possum whole. A loud thump on the roof and then a squishy fall to the ground below was the only indication that disaster was looming.

Melissa and Anthony Melendrez have been placed on probation after being charged with child abuse and child neglect following the attack in January in the family's home. During the incident, the snake wrapped itself around the toddler, constricting the child and sinking its fangs into his body. The attack prevented the boy from breathing and he began to turn blue, police reports state. He also suffered several bite wounds. The reticulated python only released the boy from his grip when Mrs Melendrez attacked it with a knife, stabbing it more than a dozen times. The snake was later euthanised, and...

ITHACA, NY--Nearly six months after the Presidential election, former Monty Python star John Cleese needs some new material.According to the Cornell Daily Sun, Cleese, in an appearance on campus, turned serious and launched into an attack on former President George W. Bush: Americans... are “much too respectful to the president,” said Cleese, who went on to say that George W. Bush would not be able to survive a single press conference in England. “It’s pathetic!” he exclaimed. “This is the most important country in the world ... It’s embarrassing because we want America to be great. There is emotion when...