Is the python hunt all hype? Scientists try to squeeze some truth into snake search By PAUL QUINLAN Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Thursday, July 30, 2009 One week after a pet python escaped its terrarium and strangled a 2‐year‐old girl in Sumter County, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson unfurled a 16‐foot python skin at a congressional hearing and warned, "It's just a matter of time before one of these things gets to a visitor in the Florida Everglades." The next week, he called for forming a python posse to hunt and kill the beasts, citing the "estimated 100,000 or more pythons now roaming the 'Glades." So began the Great Florida Python Hunt, with a special media kickoff in the Everglades during which, miraculously, hunters captured one of the elusive snakes.
Afterward Nelson told The Associated Press: "One down, 99,999 to go." And as recently as this morning, NBC reporter Kerry Sanders – reporting hip‐deep from a swamp west of Boynton Beach ‐ announced on the Today Show that "it's estimated there are more than 150,000 wild Burmese pythons on the loose."
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