Posted on 07/01/2009 8:29:44 PM PDT by FromLori
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 was dead when emergency crews arrived, the Orlando Sentinel newspaper said. It said he was being questioned and could face child endangerment charges.
Wildlife officials are increasingly concerned about the proliferation of non-native pythons in Florida's wilderness areas.
State officials say there may be as many as 150,000 Burmese pythons, which are native to Southeast Asia, living in the wild in the Everglades, where they have no natural predator.
Wildlife experts say the population grew from snakes dumped in the fragile wetlands by pet owners who no longer wanted them and pose a significant threat to native species.
The pythons can grow to more than 16 feet, live for 30 years and eat wading birds and small animals. Experts say snake enthusiasts buy them when they are small but cannot handle them when they grow to full size.
Florida Senator Bill Nelson introduced a bill in the U.S. Congress in February to ban the importation and interstate trade of the reptiles.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Sickening.
Sure is and another “boyfriend” story!
Shameful. What are people thinking? The “parents” should be in prison.
Snakes are cool, pythons and boas specifically, but they are NOT pets. I wish knucklehead Americans would realize that. Now because of their stupidity, as the article states, they pose an environmental threat to the everglades.
The most dangerous words a child well hear:
“Honey, I want you to meet my new boyfriend. He’s going to live with us.”
There are no bad pythons, only bad python owners.
I believe so, especially this part:
The python apparently broke free in the night, entered the girl’s bedroom and attacked her
To the boyfriend’s credit, he stabbed the snake when he discovered the attack. I wouldn’t have such a pet personally, especially not with a child in the house. Poor kid. It must have been terrifying.
Crazy story. I love big snakes. I love my kids too. Tragically sad.
smells fishy to me
He probably told her “love me, love my snake.”
A “holding tank” — that means trying to keep it in an aquarium?
If the parents' gun had killed the child the parents would be facing severe penalties.
Before that had the parents tired of the gun and discarded it where it was found and injured/killed someone or someone's pet the parents would be facing severe penalties.
Yet hundreds of these "pets" have been loosed and from newspaper articles we learn that there are tens of thousands (150,000?) of them spreading over large areas of the south.
.. and all Florida wants to do is ban ownership in the future?
I'd like to see former owners tracked down and account for their missing "pets."
I would agree but that seems like an impossible task.
“a boyfriend of the child’s mother”
That’s how more and more of these stories are starting.
Wondering if the snake really “escaped”
I mean, are they expecting the snakes to tell authorities who had set them loose?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.