"The effort to eradicate pythons in the Everglades resulted in 170 being removed last year, up from 95 in 2005, national park spokeswoman Linda Friar said." – Naples Daily News

Naples reporter Jeremy Cox, on Saturday, January 20, 2007, details (in part below) the real story about giant snakes being found in Florida:

Deborah Jansen plopped the white plastic trash bag onto the grass and reached inside to reveal its contents: a Burmese python, flattened the night before along U.S. 41 East.

Blood dripped from the snake’s mouth as Jansen, a wildlife biologist, uncoiled the snake to its full length and measured from mouth to tail. This one was 7 feet long, not even half-grown yet.

The invasion is on.

Last year, five pythons were found in Big Cypress National Preserve, up from three in 2005. For every python that is spotted, 10 more might be slithering around unseen, meaning the preserve in eastern Collier County could be home to 50 pythons, scientists estimate.

Wildlife officers and biologists are on high alert across Southwest Florida for the giant snakes, which can grow more than 20 feet long. A python will eat any animal that fits in its mouth, up to the size of a small deer.

Even alligators, which long have reigned at the top of the Everglades food chain, aren’t safe. A photograph of a 6-foot alligator exploding out of the gut of a python made national headlines in the fall of 2005.

* * *

The effort to eradicate pythons in the Everglades resulted in 170 being removed last year, up from 95 in 2005, national park spokeswoman Linda Friar said.

* * *

The python Jansen was measuring had been squished Monday night or Tuesday morning in front of the preserve’s main office, about three miles east of State Road 29. Pythons have been spotted inside the preserve as far from Everglades National Park as the Bear Island Unit, a popular deer-hunting area north of Alligator Alley, just east of S.R. 29.

So far, Fakahatchee Strand State Park, sometimes called “the Amazon of Florida” because of the wealth of wildlife it contains, hasn’t had any python sightings, said Mike Owen, a biologist.

But he suspects pythons are in his midst, and it’s more than a hunch. In the fall of 2004, a vehicle ran over an 8-foot exotic green anaconda on U.S. 41 East, which dissects the Fakahatchee, Owen said.

Pythons are becoming a regular sight at Rookery Bay, resource manager Keith Laakkonen said.

A 5-foot python was flattened on Barefoot Williams Road a little more than a year ago. A 6-footer was spotted crossing Collier Boulevard in the middle of the night in the direction of the reserve. And another was lying in the middle of Shell Island Road when someone gently moved the snake off the road.

For the full article see the Naples Daily News, It’s pythons vs. gators in battle for Big Cypress.