14-foot Burmese python spotted in bushes between homes. Then Florida cops stepped in

A resident of a Florida neighborhood spotted a 14-foot invasive Burmese python in the bushes between two homes — and then deputies intervened, a sheriff’s office said.

Deputies responded to the neighborhood in East Naples, about 130 miles northwest of Miami, just after 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 26, according to a Facebook post from the Collier County Sheriff’s Office.

Three deputies who were visiting from Jacksonville, about 335 miles northeast of Naples, to help with recovery efforts from Hurricane Ian caught the snake. One of them “humanely euthanized” it, the post says. Hurricane Ian made landfall on southwest Florida in late September and caused widespread flooding and destruction.

The three deputies posed holding the massive snake in a photo published on Facebook.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission collected the animal carcass and disposed of it.

Burmese pythons are invasive in Florida and are known to eat “imperiled species such as wood storks, Key Largo woodrats and limpkins,” which are tropical wetland birds, according to the post. They also eat large animals, including alligators, white-tailed deer and bobcats.

Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia and were introduced to Florida’s ecosystem when people who kept them as pets released them into the wild, according to the Everglades Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area.

They are a threat to natural ecosystems in South Florida, and “their presence has led to severe declines” in the populations of mammals in the Everglades, according to the agency.

Each year Florida hosts a “Python challenge,” inviting trappers from around the world to catch and remove as many Burmese pythons as they can from South Florida.

This year, a 19-year-old from Palmetto Bay, won the grand prize of $10,000 after catching 28 pythons — more than nearly 1,000 trappers who participated.

This story was originally published October 27, 2022 at 2:55 PM with the headline "14-foot Burmese python spotted in bushes between homes. Then Florida cops stepped in."