Eat till you burst! Literally!
Have often heard this rather ambiguous phrase...eating till you burst! And have wondered in my younger days, could such a thing really happen? Can you eat and eat till you really burst? Looks like it can happen!
A 13-foot Burmese python in the Everglades was apparantly so hungry that it decided to swallow an alligator, which alligator in turn decided to resist the attempt, leading to a clash of the Titans in the swamplands of Florida.
Reminds one of Devar movies, doesn't it? In case you don't know who Devar was, he was this producer of Tamizh films of yore, who for some reason, always wanted to have a couple of animals in every film of his! They usually fought each other, with at least one always siding with the hero! Hey, it wasn't that bad, OK! I really did like his films for the animal stunts!
Well, getting back to our Burmese python...which actually makes you question, what on Earth is a Burmese python doing in Florida. Grr, enough digression! We'll get there presently...
So, getting back to our hungry python, all pythons have this nasty habit of swallowing food whole! Mamma pythons apparantly are not inspired by any overwhelming urges to impart table manners to kid pythons. They just don't bother to teach their kids to "Chew it all before you swallow, there's a good boy." So this python swallowed the gator whole, and the gator being a go-getter (er...sorry, bad joke!) didn't want to go down without a fight! And fight it did, trying to claw at the python's stomach. No clues whether this is what did the python in, but the snake was found with the gator's hindquarters protruding from its burst mid-section! Which provides incontrovertible proof that you can keep eating till you burst!
And now to the serious part! What was the Burmese python doing in Florida? It turns out that there are people in the US who find having a python as a pet quite attractive. Possibly a young small python can make an easy pet! They can happily subsist on frozen chickens (thawed, I'm sure) fed once a week or ten days! But it is when they start growing and reaching even part of their entire length that the proud and happy owner realizes that his little studio apartment in NY is definitely not enough for him and his pet! Or maybe he found himself a girlfriend who found the snake more charming than him.
Well, whatever be the case, the python is definitely not wanted around anymore. So it is bundled into the car, and driven down I-95, to the Florida Everglades, where with perhaps a tear or two, it is released into the wild. The saddened but defnitely less burdened owner returns back to his mundane existence in corporate America, while the Burmese python begins a whole new life in the wilderness of Florida's swamps, far and away from native Myanmar. And going by statistics, the pythons have doing a jolly good job with their new found freedom! It is unknown just exactly how many pythons have made the swamps their home, but at least 150 have been captured in the past two years!
Ecologists fear that this non-native species can cause irreparable damage to the local ecosystem, competing for food, threatening many smaller species that conservationists are trying to protect, including other reptiles, otters, squirrels, woodstorks and sparrows, and even supplanting the alligator as the dominant predator.
But while the effects of that is confined only to the Florida Everglades, what is even more terrifying, with far-reaching, even global impact, is the possibility that Hollywood film makers might be seized by the insipiration to come up new movies featuring Burmese pythons, alligators and...worse...Jennifer Lopez.
A 13-foot Burmese python in the Everglades was apparantly so hungry that it decided to swallow an alligator, which alligator in turn decided to resist the attempt, leading to a clash of the Titans in the swamplands of Florida.
Reminds one of Devar movies, doesn't it? In case you don't know who Devar was, he was this producer of Tamizh films of yore, who for some reason, always wanted to have a couple of animals in every film of his! They usually fought each other, with at least one always siding with the hero! Hey, it wasn't that bad, OK! I really did like his films for the animal stunts!
Well, getting back to our Burmese python...which actually makes you question, what on Earth is a Burmese python doing in Florida. Grr, enough digression! We'll get there presently...
So, getting back to our hungry python, all pythons have this nasty habit of swallowing food whole! Mamma pythons apparantly are not inspired by any overwhelming urges to impart table manners to kid pythons. They just don't bother to teach their kids to "Chew it all before you swallow, there's a good boy." So this python swallowed the gator whole, and the gator being a go-getter (er...sorry, bad joke!) didn't want to go down without a fight! And fight it did, trying to claw at the python's stomach. No clues whether this is what did the python in, but the snake was found with the gator's hindquarters protruding from its burst mid-section! Which provides incontrovertible proof that you can keep eating till you burst!
And now to the serious part! What was the Burmese python doing in Florida? It turns out that there are people in the US who find having a python as a pet quite attractive. Possibly a young small python can make an easy pet! They can happily subsist on frozen chickens (thawed, I'm sure) fed once a week or ten days! But it is when they start growing and reaching even part of their entire length that the proud and happy owner realizes that his little studio apartment in NY is definitely not enough for him and his pet! Or maybe he found himself a girlfriend who found the snake more charming than him.
Well, whatever be the case, the python is definitely not wanted around anymore. So it is bundled into the car, and driven down I-95, to the Florida Everglades, where with perhaps a tear or two, it is released into the wild. The saddened but defnitely less burdened owner returns back to his mundane existence in corporate America, while the Burmese python begins a whole new life in the wilderness of Florida's swamps, far and away from native Myanmar. And going by statistics, the pythons have doing a jolly good job with their new found freedom! It is unknown just exactly how many pythons have made the swamps their home, but at least 150 have been captured in the past two years!
Ecologists fear that this non-native species can cause irreparable damage to the local ecosystem, competing for food, threatening many smaller species that conservationists are trying to protect, including other reptiles, otters, squirrels, woodstorks and sparrows, and even supplanting the alligator as the dominant predator.
But while the effects of that is confined only to the Florida Everglades, what is even more terrifying, with far-reaching, even global impact, is the possibility that Hollywood film makers might be seized by the insipiration to come up new movies featuring Burmese pythons, alligators and...worse...Jennifer Lopez.
