of 2003. At first glance, the gaggle of people looking out over Frankie Point might have considered the sight before them rather ordinary for the Everglades—a conspicuously large alligator approached, swimming toward them with a snake held tightly in its jaws. But as the fearsome predator drew near, it was apparent his early-morning snack was rather extraordinary. The snake, still very much alive, was roughly 10–15 feet in length and coiling the remainder of its linear mass tightly around its captor. (Figure 3)
Though appearing somewhat compromised, the alligator managed to lumber onto a nearby patch of dry ground. Now exposed, the details of the duel were easier to discern. Though the alligator had grabbed the python just behind the head in its toothy jowls, the remainder of the snake snugly girdled the trunk of the now static alligator several times around. There the pair remained locked in battle for approximately 24 hours, before a rotating cavalcade of hundreds of wide-eyed visitors and park staff. Little seemed to change during that time, save that the snake seemed to grow increasingly limp with every passing hour. By the morning of the next day, observers had written off the serpent, as it lay motionless and still—no doubt punctured to deflation by the alligator’s piercing grin.
When threatened, alligators will sometimes open their mouths and hiss loudly in an impressive defensive display. Opportunities to observe this behavior are plentiful along the Anhinga Trail. Thus, when a slightly larger alligator arrived in the area that morning and pulled close to investigate the scene for itself, it was almost expected that such a display would ensue. That the successful hunter began to open his jaws wide to avert a confrontation was not surprising. What was surprising, however, was the near-instantaneous resurrection of the snake everyone had given up for dead. In the blink of an eye, the serpent tensed its sinewy muscles and darted like a shot into nearby vegetation—never to be seen again. Though speculation ensued about whether or not the python was mortally wounded, this much was known for certain: the snake had tangled for 24 hours with the monarch of the Everglades marsh, and somehow, it had ended in a draw.
Visitors to the trail that day were privy to history—the first time ever that an Old World python had ever been observed tangling with a New World American alligator. The size of the animals, the prolonged nature of the duel, and the ultimate outcome helped stoke healthy media interest. Amidst the ensuing interviews with local reporters, park scientists were left to wonder if anything in the Everglades could successfully kill and consume a fully grown Burmese python.
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Exactly where alligators and pythons ranked in the Everglades food chain would remain unclear for nearly two years. A second alligator/python encounter was captured in a series of photographs along the main park road in June of 2005. In the open marsh of Taylor Slough, the alligator was clearly photographed pointing its snout upwards, repeatedly throwing back remnants of a large python like a bucket of raw oysters.
The 2005 encounter, unlike that at the Anhinga Trail, failed to garner any significant media attention—perhaps because it did not seemingly defy the natural order in the River of Grass. Still, it was of significance to the park. Before the encounter recorded in Taylor Slough, it appeared the only organism capable of purging Burmese pythons from the Everglades were people who, like those I encountered in the visitor center, came armed with Rubbermaid containers and questionable motives. Confirmation that at least one alligator had successfully taken its rightful throne as the apex predator in the Everglades was cause for some optimism. Perhaps there was hope that the natural system might self-regulate, that a biological means of control might be found to keep pythons numbers in check. Perhaps there was some reason to suspect the Everglades, having survived a century of unrelenting change, might also be capable of surmounting this latest plague. Unbeknownst to park staff, such guarded optimism was destined to last only four short months.
2
Getting Acquainted
Michael Barron has flown helicopters over the vast horizons of Everglades National Park for years. During that time, he has piloted researchers to every remote corner of the backcountry, scoured the landscape in search of bird rookeries and alligator nests, and ferried countless firefighters to the front lines of sprawling conflagrations. And yet despite all he has seen in the wilds of south Florida, little could compare to what he encountered while hovering over the marsh one day in September of 2005.
Flying high above the northern reaches of the park with a pair of researchers on board, Barron saw an unusually shaped figure below. Deciding to investigate, he set the floats beneath his craft gingerly into the inundated sawgrass prairie. Exiting the vehicle, he sloshed a short distance through hip-deep water to find a gruesome scene. There, floating amidst emergent vegetation and open water were the decapitated remains of a nearly 13-foot Burmese python. The animal was badly bloated, and protruding from its ruptured stomach were the tail and hind quarters of what appeared to be a large alligator. Barron surveyed the scene briefly, but didn’t stay long. “I started getting a little nervous about being up to my waist in the water,” he later recounted, “in an area where there’s twelve-foot pythons hanging around.” Barron managed to snap a few quick photos before returning to his airship for the journey home (Figure 4).
The subsequent day, Barron piloted park biologist Skip Snow out to the area to examine the macabre curiosity he had found in the marsh. Upon landing, Snow set to work. Conducting a necropsy in the field, Snow determined the alligator (now in an advanced state of decay) to be over six feet in length. In the python’s intestines, he found large pieces of the alligator’s skin. Though the puzzling scene provided little to explain why the serpent perished, how its stomach ruptured, or how it lost its head, one thing seemed clear—at some point the python had managed to subdue and consume the monarch of the Everglades marsh.
Media interest flared yet again as news of the discovery spread. Snow was interviewed extensively, and Barron’s crime scene photos were published around the world. Numerous national papers detailed the story, touting banner headlines reading “Clash of the Titans” and “Fatal Indigestion.” Internationally, the gory pictures of the eviscerated serpent were bandied about by the BBC, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Daily Telegraph. And taking a cue from America’s Most Wanted, National Geographic aired an hour-long documentary that attempted to expose details behind the fatal encounter. Using sophisticated computer animations and laboratory experiments, the episode only added to the confusion by offering a new hypothesis that implicated a second alligator in the scuffle. Despite extensive investigation, the curious double homicide would forever remain steeped in mystery. But for many viewers and readers, the resulting coverage and publicity provided their first glimpse of the Florida Everglades—one far different than the idyllic picture-perfect sunset over an open expanse of sawgrass.
In addition to providing new insight regarding the mutual relish with which alligators and pythons might consume one another, Barron’s gruesome discovery also provided an important new data point. The amazing alligator-eating python was one of the first of his ilk to be found in Shark Slough—the liquid heart of Everglades National Park. Not only were pythons now known to be capable of swallowing large alligators, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that they readily occupied the same watery haunts.
In a coincidence that mirrored a bad publicity stunt, ABC premiered Invasion, a suspense series about aliens infiltrating the Florida Everglades, that same month. The show featured sets that barely resembled the Glades, starred impossibly attractive actors playing park rangers, and followed a storyline as thin as spider’s silk. In only a year, the show’s viewership went south, but in the true Everglades it seemed real invaders were headed farther north.
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Historically, the Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus) has long proven difficult to categorize—so much so that successive generations of taxonomists have waffled about its proper classification. For the better part of a century, it has been defined as one of two closely related subspecies that occupy a large swath of south Asia and several associated islands. The Burmese python
