Snakes Have Made Me Post Again

Actually, I've been thinking for a while that I should attempt to restart and sustain this blog. I've finished and defended my dissertation, so I have time to research and write about things of relatively pure interest to me. However, I was watching a recorded episode of the Daily Show, and one of the stories has driven me to release a sporadic shout into the night. It's a particularly easy release, in that I really only have to copy it from the frantic email I rattled off to two of my friends.

So did you see the Jon Stewart clip about all the Burmese pythons ravaging Florida?

Over the last several years they have escaped from pet stores, and they are breeding like crazy. They are also spreading across the state and eating everything, at least all things deer-sized and under, as far as the snake-tracking officials know. They can grow up to eighteen feet long and travel across a mile and a half of land a day. One of the news clips said that they can easily reach DC--that is, here--given that it's in the huge chunk of the United States sporting the climate to support them.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

So, after Obama won, I thought, Well, I don't have to move to Canada now. If I do move there, it will be because of its own merits only.

But now I am driven once again to Canada. More precisely, I am driven to the extremely cold parts that I formerly could not consider. The parts where the giant snakes definitely are unable to survive.

As Jon Stewart said, "On a side note, Florida, thanks for starting almost every *bleep* thing in the world ever." I'm thinking it was "every shitty thing." But "every fucked-up thing" works as well.

In hopes that this was all a Daily Show exaggeration, I did twenty seconds of Google research, and I found this story.

Science Daily, huh? Well, that sounds pretty official. The article dates from last May, and it offhandedly presents one of the more terrifying variables in the overall equation: "'As soon as you know they’re breeding, eradication gets to be out of the question,' ...said [Frank Mazzotti, University of Florida researcher and snake-chaser]. 'Females may store sperm, so they can produce fertile clutches for years. And a 100-something pound snake can easily be producing 60, 80 eggs a year.'"

Store sperm? Store sperm?

I'll just mention that I've been speaking out against this snake-as-pet thing for a long time now. However, in all of my phobia-inspired yet accurate imaginings, I never foretold that it would lead to the worst version of the apocalypse ever.