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Palms West Monthly • January 2021 • Page 1
Palms West
Monthly
WELLINGTON • ROYAL PALM BEACH • WEST PALM BEACH • LOXAHATCHEE GROVES • THE ACREAGE Volume 11, Number 1
PalmsWestMonthly.com
MOVIE UNDER THE STARS Watch “Sonic the Hedgehog” at Royal Palm Beach Commons Park Jan. 22! PAGE 4
FREE • January 2021
Snake and Eggs?
Executive Women of Palm Beaches host holiday event
The Executive Women of the Palm Beaches hosted a holiday celebration Dec. 4, via Zoom. The virtual event honored scholarship recipients and the Lois Kwasman Community Impact Grant recipient.
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Hanukkah meals delivered to seniors
Thanks to local volunteers, more than 450 community members in need – including Holocaust survivors – received Hanukkah meals in December.
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Holistic vet care offers alternative to traditional care Natural alternatives to traditional veterinary care usually don’t involve drugs, surgery or other invasive means to treat people’s beloved family pets.
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State officials would like Floridians to put invasive pythons on the menu as a way to control their population. By CHRIS PERKINS Associated Press
FORT LAUDERDALE — Donna Kalil estimates she’s eaten a dozen pythons in the last three years or so. That’s not including the python jerky, says Kalil, a python hunter for the South Florida Water Management District. “I eat that several times a week because I take it out with me on python hunts and I eat it out there.” State officials would like to see more people like Kalil putting pythons on the menu – not because of their nutritional value but as another way to encourage hunting to control their population. Burmese pythons are considered an invasive species in Florida. The voracious appetite of these apex predators disrupts the food chain in environmentally fragile areas like the Everglades. Believed to have begun their Florida invasion after owners released them into the wild, python numbers have boomed and the state has struggled to reign them in. “We would like to use consumption as another way to encourage people to remove pythons in Florida if the meat is safe to eat,” Carli Segelson, a spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, wrote in an email. “The study will help ensure that is safe.” Other invasive species are consumed – most notably lionfish – as a way to control their populations. Some people even eat iguanas. But there’s a concern about eating pythons, and it’s one the state has started to research: The massive snakes, like some fish, could be full of mercury, a neurotoxin that is dangerous to humans. That’s why the Florida Department of Health is working with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to conduct tissue samples on pythons to determine whether they contain too much mercury for human consumption. If the levels are safe, get ready to make new entries in your Florida invasive species cookbook. Python is good in chili – or so Kalil says. She also likes it in stir near and just fry. north of Naples But her favorite way to eat python is to pressure cook it for 10 had concentrations or 15 minutes, sauté it with onions and garlic, and add it to pasta of less than 5 ppm. and sauce. “We have one of Kalil, a Miami native who gave up her real estate job to hunt the worst mercury problems in the world in the Everglades and pythons full time, said the meat is rubbery and tough if you don’t South Florida,” said Rumbold, who was among the study’s authors. prepare it properly. The pressure cooker makes it more tender, The reason is because rainfall carries pollutants from the air to she said. the ground and marshes in the Everglades convert the mercury And the taste? “I don’t really want to say like fish because it is into a form that is dangerous more the texture of fish,” Kalil for humans. said, “but it definitely does not taste anything like fish, it tastes As the state attempts to more like chicken.” find resolution in the mercury Or, maybe, another white problem in pythons, the Florida meat. “I’m going to say pork,” Python Challenge, the state’s she said. “More like a pork chop annual hunt that awards cash maybe.” prizes for the most, largest and The Environmental heaviest pythons caught, is Protection Agency and the being squeezed out of its usual Food and Drug Administration January starting date. say the safe limit for mercury is The delay is to maximize the 0.3 parts per million. Some of number of snakes captured, the Everglades pythons regisSegelson said, and also an tered more than 100 times that. attempt to keep hunters safe “The pythons were hunfrom the COVID-19 threat. dreds of parts per million,” said “The winter months are a Darren Rumbold, a Florida Gulf good time to capture pythons,” Photo by Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP Coast University professor. Segelson said. “However, we Hialeah Gardens High School student Ethan Backs captures a Burmese Python More recently, a study found during the ceremony for the Florida Python Challenge 2020 Python Bowl Kickoff Event Friday, Jan. 10, 2020, in Sunrise. PYTHONS / PAGE 9 pythons in southwest Florida