Mike Kimmel with the 17-foot python he caught draped around his neck.
World

17-foot python caught in Florida

By Steven Anderson / June 15, 2020

But as shortly he established eyes on his most current capture, he understood it would be one to try to remember.

Kimmel, operator of Martin County Trapping & Wildlife Rescue, experienced long gone out into the Florida Everglades past week hoping to capture a big Burmese python.

He headed to a secluded island in which he noticed alligator droppings and a black snake — but then arrived upon a big python that he instantly understood was special. “My coronary heart commenced pounding,” Kimmel explained to CNN. “I’ve caught massive kinds just before, but this a single appeared excess substantial.”

He was certainly intimated by the snake, he claimed, but he is not acknowledged as the Python Cowboy for absolutely nothing. Right after a short wrestle and a awful bite, which was all caught in his YouTube movie, Kimmel was able to seize the woman snake’s head and efficiently drag her back again to his boat, wherever he euthanized her.

Kimmel is waiting on state authorities for an formal measurement. When he calculated the snake at house, it was about 17 toes very long and he estimates that it weighed about 130 to 150 pounds, he explained.

The greatest python captured in Florida was 18 toes, 8 inches extensive, in accordance to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The pythons started turning up in the Everglades in the 1980s, most possible abandoned by pet house owners when they acquired as well large to handle. Some may well have escaped from a breeding facility wrecked through Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Now wildlife officers estimate there could be as quite a few as 100,000 pythons residing in the Everglades. The snakes destroy indigenous animals which include racoons, otters, birds and even alligators.

Kimmel ideas to provide the snake’s pores and skin on his web site. He said he will also obtain a payment from Florida’s Python Action Staff, which pays individuals to eliminate the invasive species.

“I was very pleased that I came out on top rated and I understood that I was likely to get a excellent paycheck out of it,” Kimmel stated. “But most of all, a snake that measurement can genuinely get to just about anything, so I was thrilled to get this risky predator out of the ecosystem.”

CNN’s Alaa Elassar contributed to this report.

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