and disruptive invasive species. An adult female can lay as many as ninety eggs, which she will encircle and guard from predators.
Like all constrictors, pythons encoil their prey, squeezing the breath out of it. By disengaging their jaws, the snakes are able to swallow animals of much larger girth, which are typically consumed head-first. In this way the furtive intruders have decimated native Everglades wildlife, including marsh rabbits, raccoons, otters, opossums, and full-grown deer. Adult Burmese pythons will even drown and devour alligators. To the chagrin of suburban Floridians, pythons will leave the wetlands to travel long distances. Frequently they are discovered prowling residential neighborhoods, the signal clue being a sharp dip in the cat population.
To stem the onslaught, authorities have recruited both lay hunters and experienced reptile handlers by offering hourly wages and bounty payments that escalate per foot of snake. While the frenetic capture videos are wildly popular on YouTube, the removal program has so far proven to be biologically inconsequential. Although hundreds of pythons have been caught and removed, biologists believe that many thousands more are still on the loose, mating insatiably.
Despite their startling size, individual specimens aren’t easy to find. Their skin is lightly hued, with chocolate-brown patches creating puzzle-board patterns similar to that of a giraffe. Even the beefiest of pythons can be astonishingly well-camouflaged in the wild, and experts cite their “low detectability” as a primary challenge for hunters.
“Where the hell did it come from?” Tripp Teabull grumbled about the one in the tree. “And why did it show up here, of all places?”
“Sir, you’ve got a pond full of slow, dumb fish. However, that”—Angie cocked her trigger finger at the exceptional lump in the python—“is something else.”
Mauricio and a co-worker arrived with a ladder that unfolded to twenty feet. With Angie’s assistance they notched one end into a cabled tangle of banyan branches directly beneath the quarry, which remained motionless.
“You think there’s more of those fuckers around here?” Mauricio asked.
Angie said this was the first one she’d ever heard of on the island. “What do you suppose she ate?”
The groundskeeper exchanged a tense glance with Teabull. “How do you know it’s a she?” he asked Angie.
“The biggest ones always are.”
“Then maybe she didn’t eat anything,” Teabull cut in. “Maybe she’s just pregnant.”
Angie chuckled. “Sir, that’s not a baby bump.”
Scientists in the Everglades have implanted transmitters in captured pythons and released them to help locate “breeding aggregations,” groups of randy males that communally cavort with a lone large female. That telemetry tracking has led to the interruption of many amorous assemblies but, so far, it has failed to stop the epochal march of the species. Although many pythons were found dead one winter after a rare hard freeze, the hardy survivors rebounded and—thanks to natural selection—produced new generations able to withstand colder temperatures. Nonetheless, Palm Beach County, which on some January nights experiences temperatures in the thirties, was believed to be safely north of the invaders’ comfort zone.
“We should fill in that damn koi pond,” Teabull said, “if that’s the big attraction.”
Angie asked him if any domestic animals were allowed to roam the grounds of Lipid House. Teabull said absolutely not.
Mauricio spoke up. “We got a few iguanas. Everybody’s got iguanas.”
“Have any neighbors complained that their pets have gone missing? Like maybe a Rottweiler,” Angie said, “or a miniature pony.”
“That’s not funny,” Teabull snapped.
“Sir, I’m serious.” Angie’s habit of saying “sir” was the result of a childhood rule imposed by her father, whose own father had been a career Marine. She said, “These snakes feed only on live prey. Are you sure no animals have disappeared in the neighborhood?”
Teabull shot another uneasy look at Mauricio before saying, “I’ll ask around.”
Angie turned to the groundskeeper. “All right, let’s see that blade of yours.”
Because of their gluttonous threat to Florida’s shaky ecological balance, all captured pythons are supposed to be euthanized. A gunshot is the most humane way, but another state-approved method is decapitation by machete. The one that Mauricio loaned to Angie Armstrong was practically new.
Teabull said, “One more thing, Ms. Armstrong. Could you please move that thing off-site before you kill it?”
“Sir, I’m loving your sense of humor.”
“There are nine hundred guests here tonight!”
“Okay, we’ll do it your way,” Angie said. “But I’ll need four of your strongest security guys to help me wrestle it out of the tree. My experience is that large men are often terrified of snakes, so please find me a crew that isn’t. FYI, their tuxedos