Slithering Surprise

On occasion, rumors and facts blur into a little bit of each. Where smoke is rising, a fire must be burning nearby, but as reality and perception blend into something too shocking to believe, money is usually the motive for the most unpalatable of stories.

No one is quite sure how the big snakes came to the Everglades, but the Burmese python is an invasive reality that is now under scrutiny. A herpetologist is a person who studies reptiles, and the herpetologists in the Everglades today are busy with one of the biggest snake populations on earth.

As the reptile scientists explain, the Florida alligator is a native species to the Sunshine State and the subtropical zone that borders the Everglades. The alligator has been living in Florida for more than eight million years and has a remarkable reproductive system. The female alligator will lay approximately 20 to 50 eggs in a clutch and then cover her nest with vegetation to incubate the offspring. All of the eggs in the clutch are born either male or female, depending on the temperature of the nest during incubation. Alligator eggs have a very good survival rate because 13% of the eggs hatch, mature, and grow into adult alligators. This percentage of growth indicates the alligators in the future will be healthy and stable and without the possibility of overpopulation.

The Burmese python that has come to invade the Everglades, however, is a far different scenario. The big snakes, which grow easily to over twenty feet long, have a very aggressive breeding and reproductive system. The pythons breed in springtime and produce 40 to 100 eggs in a clutch. The survival percentage for a python egg growing into an adult is 55%. From egg into maturity, the snakes are actively breeding at four years of age. 

The herpetologists who study the progress of the monstrous creatures have found the bigger snakes weigh around 200 pounds and have a girth about the size of a telephone pole. Small deer, large raccoons, and even other snakes of a poisonous variety have been the subjects of discovery inside the digestive system of the big reptiles.

The biggest mystery, however, regarding these rapidly growing and reproducing reptiles is simply that the large slithering creatures are not taking over the Everglades ecosystem in the alarming fashion in which the offspring and survival numbers indicate. Indeed, the scientists from the swamps were baffled with their data until a recent investigation began to reveal certain facts that will perhaps stagger the imagination.

During the last few years after the Covid-19 pandemic, the prices of beef, poultry, and eggs began to reach record levels and then suddenly began to taper off. The explanation for the decline in prices now seems to be an explanation of simple economics. Another food source has slowly been creeping into the marketplace and is only now finding recognition in the media.

During the last few weeks, several television stations were airing segments on the possibility of harvesting Burmese pythons in the Everglades as a new food source. Interviewers were out on the streets and asking the passersby if a snake for supper was an appealing idea - especially if the snake tastes like chicken and is far cheaper.

Most of the interviewees shuddered at the thought and a few even began to look ill when considering snake for lunch, dinner or supper, but nevertheless, the viewing audiences were reminded that snake in other parts of the world is a delicacy and even a staple diet for many impoverished countries around the globe.

In China, Jyutpinp is a popular Cantonese delicacy and health supplement. The famous snake soup of Hong Kong is a broth and stew of three different types of serpents. According to Western customers in restaurants in China, the snake in the soup resembles the texture and taste of chicken. Hong Kong yan - the residents of Hong Kong - insist the soup has multiple nutrition values and that the bile of many snakes added to the soup just before serving delivers a powerful aphrodisiac.

During the past few months, and well before the local television stations were hosting interviews on the possibility of eating the big snakes in the Everglades, Dr. Sherri Gross, a leading herpetologist at the Center for Invasive Species in Atlanta, has been analyzing different food sources in the Southern United States.

The first experiments began with the collection of Burmese python DNA. Apparently, the DNA from the big exotic snakes is quite different from other native serpents and is easy to identify.

The next step in the research was a comparison study of local food sources. The texture of the flesh of the python does look like freshly harvested chicken and no perceptible scent was detectable that would identify one flesh from the other. In fact, several butchers, under the direction of Dr. Gross’s study, could not find a difference between the meat of the expensive foul and the abundant meat of the exotic reptile.

The final and most shocking of Dr. Gross’s findings came when she began to analyze the DNA of “Chicken Tenders” and “Boneless Chicken Fingers” in restaurants and grocery stores across the southeastern United States. Apparently, delivery companies have been substituting chicken strips with the harvested flesh of large Burmese pythons.

Dr. Gross did not wish to comment on how many men, women, and children might have been eating snakes without knowing they were doing so, but she did estimate the number of meals that were once slithering might be in the hundreds of thousands.

Almost everything you have just read is a complete work of fiction and is NOT TRUE.

Happy April Fool’s weekend . . . Marco, Goodland, and the Isles of Capri!

Tom Williams is a Marco Islander and the author of two books: “Lost and Found” and “Surrounded by Thunder—the Story of Darrell Loan and the Rocket Men.” Both books are available on Kindle and Nook.