A Charlotte County man encountered a nearly 12-foot Burmese python on Tuesday night in Rotonda West, Florida. The snake was spotted on Medalist Drive, stretching halfway across the road.<\/p>\n
Wade Gardner, a local resident, shared his experience with WINK News.<\/p>\n
“They would never believe me if I just sent them a picture of it, they would want to know where I got the picture of the snake from,” said Gardner.<\/p>\n
Upon discovering the snake while returning home from dinner, Gardner and his neighbors stopped to take a closer look.<\/p>\n
“It was hard to miss because it stretched at least halfway across the road,” said Gardner. “We just stopped. I took one quick picture and realized I didn’t have anything else to handle it with.”<\/p>\n
Gardner quickly returned home to retrieve a snare and an ax to manage the situation.<\/p>\n
The python, measuring over 11 feet long and 15 inches wide, caught the attention of the community.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Naturalist Rob Howell provided insight into the increasing presence of these invasive snakes in the area.<\/p>\n
“These animals can get pushing 15 average. Average is, you know, six to eight and then eight to 10 is pretty large,” said Howell.<\/p>\n
Howell explained that the snakes are migrating north from the Everglades in search of food.<\/p>\n
“They’re going to keep moving north as food sources dwindle where they’re at because they’re eating everything,” said Howell.<\/p>\n
Gardner contacted the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) following the encounter.<\/p>\n
“They said there’s just too many of them now, and they can’t come and get all of them. So bury it, put it in the trash,” said Gardner.<\/p>\n
Since the python sighting, Gardner has earned a new nickname in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
“Now I’m the snake guy,” said Gardner.<\/p>\n
WINK News reached out to the FWC for further comment. The FWC advises that Burmese pythons, being invasive in Florida, should be killed humanely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Charlotte County man encountered a nearly 12-foot Burmese python on Tuesday night in Rotonda West, Florida. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[24437,33614,209,211,210,4250,853,3879,3961,28,575,33615,33613],"class_list":["post-53508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-apex-predators","tag-burmese","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-charlotte","tag-charlotte-county","tag-everglades","tag-fish-and-wildlife-conservation-commission","tag-florida","tag-food","tag-food-sources","tag-python"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}