Holy Snakenado! 9-Foot Burmese Python Caught Swimming Offshore

HOMESTEAD, FL — First there was "Jaws," then "Orca." Now comes a 9-foot swimming Burmese Python that can hoist itself 6 feet out of the water and squeeze its prey to death. Worse, yet, it's not from Hollywood.

Holy Snakenado. It's real.

By now everyone around South Florida has heard of the dreaded Burmese pythons, which are wreaking havoc on the local ecosystem and turning up in some unusual places — but not as unusual as officials in Biscayne National Park can now attest.

Park officials posted photos of a 9-footer on Friday after it apparently went for a swim and wound up wrapped around an offshore platform used for water quality measurements. The swimming reptile was sunning itself when a kayaker came upon it in mid-November.

“The snake probably got in the canal, swam out, sort of hop-scotched from island to island and then ran out of islands,” Park Ranger Jay Johnstone theorized in an interview with Patch on Friday. “They are excellent swimmers, fantastic swimmers.”

According to the park’s Facebook page, the kayaker discovered the snake while paddling around the small platform in Biscayne Bay just east of the man-made Mowry Canal.

“Soon after, South Florida Water Management District technicians observed the snake and quickly removed it,” the Facebook post added.

Johnstone estimated that the swim was somewhere between two to four football fields from the shore to the platform.

“It’s about 6 feet off of the water surface,” he added. “It’s in water that’s about 12 feet deep.”

Since Biscayne National Park is about 95 percent water, the park has been spared many of the problems associated with the snakes at nearby Everglades National Park, where this invasive species now threatens local wildlife.

“We’re an aquatic park. It’s not as ideal for them,” acknowledged Johnstone. “They will increase in numbers, but we’re 95 percent water. They are a terrestrial animal that can traverse water…. But it’s not a surprise that they are here.”

He added that pythons and other non-native species will most likely never be eradicated. The goal is to manage their populations.

After putting on its swimming demonstration, the snake from the platform has earned a new gig at the park.

“That snake is going to be used as a training tool,” Johnstone said. “It will be used to train a course of basically snake hunters that are going to be trying to manage the python population here in South Florida.”

He said that captive snakes don't always make for realistic training exercises.

“It gives us an opportunity to have a wild snake to capture,” he explained. “You just put the snake out and everybody has to try and catch it. These wild ones, they’ll escape,” which is exactly what trainers want.

Anyone who encounters a Burmese Python at Biscayne National Park is asked report the sighting to a park ranger or by visiting www.ivegot1.org.

Photos courtesy of Biscayne National Park