Those invading animals!
In the history of American cinema, the 1950's and 1980's stand out
as decades where cheap sci-fi films about animals gone mad garnered their share
of the box office.
But sci-fi meets sci-fact in the Everglades. Despite a stint on
the endangered species list and a whole lot of bad press, the American
Alligator has been deposed as the king of the Everglades food chain.
Last week, the Miami Herald reported on
Mike Kimmel, a trapper who, for the third time in his career, found himself
saving a gator from the grips of the new king, a Burmese Python.
While neither
was the biggest of its species, the 10-foot snake was constricting the
four-foot gator in a pinnacle example of reptile-on-reptile violence.
The rise of the pythons in south Florida is not a new story. When it dawns upon exotic pet owners that a two-or-three-foot baby snake inevitably becomes a 16-foot adolescent snake, they lose interest, and, rather than face the daunting task of flushing a 16-foot snake down the toilet, they liberate it in the Everglades.
Wildlife biologists estimate that the released pythons and their
spawn now number in the tens of thousands, or maybe the hundreds of thousands,
nobody knows. And pythons, not the gators, now rule.
Screenplay writers take note: Invasive wildlife stories now
abound. Asian carp are in several Midwest river systems, out-eating native fish
while displaying a Three Stooges-like behavior.
The sound of boat engines in
the water makes them crazy, with fish up to 20 pounds breaching out of the
water and occasionally hitting a fisherman or reporter upside the head. A frenetic, costly
effort is underway to keep the fish out of the Great Lakes.
Lionfish are exotically beautiful creatures with poisonous spines. More
dignified than a breaching Asian carp, the lionfish are simply devouring their
way from their native Asia to the Caribbean and up the U.S. Atlantic coast.
Armadillos, while
hardly a threat to anything, have set a steady course from Mexico to what some
biologists think will eventually include Washington DC as a northernmost extent
of their range.
Why aren't they asked to help pay for the Wall?
Exceptions that prove the rule
At least three feared-and-loathed invasive species have
underperformed their fierce reputations.
Africanized "killer bees"
were predicted to overwhelm their more docile cousins, bringing lethal stinging
swarms northward from Mexico. Alas, the bees only killed as a recurring Saturday Night Live skit.
Similarly, walking catfish, like
the pythons imported to Florida from Southeast Asia, were feared to walk on
their stubby pectoral fins, colonizing pond after pond. Hasn't happened.
Neither have we been overrun by snakeheads, another
Asian import.
And finally, the brown tree snake, native of Indonesia, colonized
Pacific islands courtesy of World War II-era troop and cargo ships. In Guam the
snakes wiped out every bird species on the island.
The mildly venomous, semi-aquatic menaces frequently short out the
island's power grid by slithering from line to line.
They're the object of a few bizarre reports of slithering out of
toilets to bite unsuspecting victims in extremely unfortunate places. Multiple
books have been written about the snakes, including Mark Jaffe's And No Birds Sing and
Alan Burdick's Out of Eden.
So support your local wildlife. And please dispose of your 16-foot
pythons responsibly.
