I was fascinated by this profile of Donna Kalil – one of Florida’s top python hunters. Here’s an excerpt that lays out the context –
“Kalil jumps from the truck, long braid swinging, and moves in on her quarry. At sixty-two years old, Kalil is a full-time, year-round professional python hunter, and the original python huntress: She is the first woman to hold this job, not that gender crosses anyone’s mind out here in the living, breathing wilderness of the Everglades. I am tagging along to witness her in action and to experience what it’s like to catch one of the most devastating invasive species in the world.
The night air, heavy with the promise of rain, reverberates with frog calls. Mindful of where her shadow falls, Kalil positions herself between the python and the endless black reach of swamp beyond it. Then she pounces, angling for a strong grip just behind the head. After a tussle, the Burmese python submits even as it wraps itself, cool and smooth to the touch, around her leg. This brief fight represents the 876th time Kalil has pitted herself against a Burmese python and won—the 876th time she will snap a photo of the snake, lower it into a cloth bag, and load it into her truck. And the 876th time that, later, in private, she will take its life.
Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia, where they stalk and swim the marshes, rainforests, and grasslands, preying on just about anything that moves. By the 1970s they had started arriving in Florida, and especially in Miami, as an exotic pet trade boomed. But some pet owners found they didn’t know what to do with a hungry constrictor that was creeping toward twenty feet and two hundred pounds, so they opened cages and back doors and let their companions slither away. Other snakes, perhaps, simply escaped. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew destroyed a breeding center for pet pythons near the Everglades, loosing hundreds more. In a tropical landscape that so nicely echoed their homelands, the reptiles began to do what they do best—hunt.“
It is a well-written piece – worth reading in full. I had a few reflections:
(1) The story begins with humans in Florida who thought it’d be a good idea to bring in Burmese pythons as pets. Few paused to think about what would happen when they grew up. It is amazing how often we, as a species, don’t stop to think through second order consequences.
(2) As the writer speaks to python hunters, they all talk about how they feel the pain of killing these snakes en masse. One of them even says that the day he gets desensitized to the killing is the day he’ll quit.
And, yet, every kill saves a ton of native wildlife that hasn’t had the chance to develop evolutionary defenses.
(3) There are a couple of lovely notes about how Donna Kalil has been upending assumptions about what women can or cannot do. Donna just won the prize in the Fall challenge for python hunters. She’s just the best – gender doesn’t matter.
(4) Python hunting, as a profession, makes for a hard life. I was struck at the commitment and dedication of this group of people who are fighting a battle they won’t win in their lifetime in their attempts to clean up a mess they didn’t create.
It is a reminder of the devastating impact we can have when we disrupt the natural balance.
