TODAY'S NEWS

Python Population Overruns Everglades

· The Florida Everglades are lush and wet and green -- seemingly the perfect environment for enormous snakes, including the Burmese python.

Not so, says wildlife biologist Skip Snow. There could be thousands of pythons in Everglades National Park, he says. The problem is they don't belong there.

Snow is working to rid the Everglades of the snakes.

The first pythons were found in the park in the 1970s. They probably were dumped there by people who bought them as pets and then decided that a snake that could grow to be 12 feet long probably didn't belong in a house. From there, the population exploded, Snow says.

Now the snakes, which have razor-sharp teeth, are eating practically anything that moves in the park -- killing small mammals and large wading birds.

Snow's goal is to get the python population under control so that the snakes don't threaten to wipe out the other animals.

He recently started tracking the snakes with a beagle puppy he calls Python Pete. Never fear, the puppy is kept on a leash so he doesn't become a "snake snack," according to the National Park Service.