More Python News
Another Burmese python is in the news, this time for
eating someone's pet Siamese cat.
To those of us who prefer dogs, this is no great loss, and yet there is dismay in Florida, where the cat was consumed.
This is, of course, the second python with a prodigious appetite. About a week ago, another python tried to eat a Florida alligator, with dramatic results. As the AP put it, "The python blew up as it tried to swallow that alligator."
(Someone was waiting his whole career to write that line.)
I find these stories as entertaining as the next guy, or I wouldn't be blogging about them. But there is a serious point. Is it legal to sell pythons in Florida, or anywhere else? And if so, why? After all, this is an animal that can grow eight feet in a year. And when that happens, the people who buy them simply take them to a swamp somewhere and release them, where they wreak havoc on ecosystems with no natural defenses against pythons.
One wishes that the next animal to be eaten by a python is the person who bought it, because he thinks it's cool to own an animal that, it's safe to say, was never meant to be a house pet.... Why is it the instinct of some human beings to think that an animal can only be appreciated if it is captured and/or killed?
