And just when you thought it was safe to head back into the swamp. Out of the Everglades comes the most fascinating, horrifying, terror-inducing, and just plain “Holy refried hoppenjohns” story I’ve heard in a long while. From the Associated Press: “Python bursts after trying to eat gator.”
Seven words that should never, ever, be married together, yet, there you have it.
In the Florida Everglades, already a mean place where the inhabitants pretty much spend all their time trying to eat one another, a 13-foot python tried to eat a 6-foot gator … alive. Uh, needless to say, it didn’t turn out so well for either predator. As much as I hate to repeat it, the python managed to get the alligator half way down before remarking, “Houston we have a problem!” and more or less exploding on the spot.
(Next time you think to yourself at dinner, “If I eat one more bit, I’ll explode,” realize it could actually happen.)
I live in semi-perpetual fear, anyway. Fear that freak lighting will not only one day strike me dead, but also burn a message in my clothing that reads, “He’s wearing pink boxer shorts.” Fear that a bus will run me over and carry me to Tulsa. (It’s ending up in Tulsa that’s the scary part.) And a fear of snakes.
Now I have gator-eating snakes to worry about.
Is this how terrifying the wilds of Florida have become? And is this how stupid animals can get?
As my co-worker Mike Horn mused, at what point did the snake realize this might not be so good an idea. “Mnnph, I think it’s stuck.”
It’s not like snakes have hands, or toothpicks. Something gets stuck, and you’re pretty much up the creek. You don’t just take yourself in to the dentist or the emergency room. And you can’t speed up the digestion process by willing it so. “C’mon! Hurry! I’ve got a date in 20 minutes.”
The lesson? Don’t put everything you find lying around the swamp in your mouth. Show some restraint. There are plenty of swamp rats to eat. Make it easy on yourself. Or go vegetarian.
But I’m haunted by the photo (one of the most viewed images on Yahoo) of these two super-sized predators fallen on the battlefield. I picture a cricket sitting on a reed shaking his head and muttering, “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.”
It probably was peer pressure. Bunch of his python friends egging him on. “Go on, man. He’s only 6-feet-long, twice your width, extremely bad-tempered, has jaws that can cut through steel, and oh yeah, massive razor-tipped claws on his back feet that will slice through you like birthday cake. Do it! Put him in your mouth!”
And I’m sure the gator was just as shocked as anyone. “You’ve got to be kidding! You’re going to try to eat me?!?”
What’s a python doing out in the Everglades anyway? The story suggested it was probably someone who got one when it was still small and cute. (Huh? Cute?) But like everything, it grew up, ate the family cat, most of the lawn furniture, and one day dad woke up from a nap to find the python’s mouth half way up his thigh. Time to find it a new home. Let’s dump it in the Everglades!
Great, turn it loose out there. As if it’s not dangerous enough with all the gators, the panthers, the water moccasins, and the gun-toting rabid buck-toothed squirrels.
Now, we have gator-eating pythons? I don’t know about anyone else, but I will never look at that river of grass the same way again. (And next time I pass through, it will be at about 150 mph.)