Murder on the Orient Espresso(16)

Seemed like kind of a waste to me. ‘Don’t they usually have just one locomotive and then circle it around to the other end at the station so it can go back in the direction it came?’

‘Yes, if there was a station. We’ll be stopping on the single track in the Everglades and simply reversing back the other direction.’ A gust of wind ruffled the banner. ‘I hope the storms will hold off until after our three-hour tour.’

‘Three-hour tour,’ I repeated, the theme from Gilligan’s Island dancing through my head. Not to mention the photograph of what was left of Flagler’s Railroad after the 1935 hurricane. ‘Isn’t the route through the Everglades called Alligator Alley?’

‘Well, the driving one, anyway. However, we’ll be on a railroad bed that has just been completed – or almost completed – quite a bit north of the highway. We won’t even see Alligator Alley. And besides,’ Missy picked up one of the banner ropes and eyed it with evil intent, ‘you don’t see quite as many alligators anymore. The pythons are eating them.’

I reflexively glanced west toward the Everglades, imagining ominous clouds building in the dark. Despite the Florida heat, I felt a chill. ‘Pythons? As in … snakes?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Missy said. ‘Burmese pythons.’

She said it as casually as Wisconsinites would say ‘Canada geese.’ But geese don’t eat alligators. The worst they could do is poop all over them. ‘Burmese pythons? How in the world—’

‘—did they get to Florida?’ Missy was trying to unstick the tape she’d attached to her edge of the banner. ‘Until a couple of years ago it was legal to have them as pets.’

‘Pet snakes.’ Snakes in their natural habitat scare me enough, but in the house? Brr. And what did you do with them? Take Fido out for a slither? Play fetch the squirrel? A snake didn’t even have ears to scratch.

‘… ball pythons,’ Missy was saying. ‘People who had Burmese pythons before the law was changed are grandfathered in and can keep the one – or more – they already have, assuming they get a “reptile of concern” permit.’

One or more ‘reptiles of concern’?

‘Unfortunately,’ Missy continued, ‘permitted or not, if the snakes get so big they’re not cute anymore, people tend to dump them into the Everglades.’

I was kind of stuck on her choice of ‘cute’ when describing snakes in general, but especially those that could realistically consider alligators ‘snack-size.’

‘Isn’t that like … I don’t know, biological littering?’

‘I suppose. And, maybe even worse, Hurricane Andrew back in ’ninety-two destroyed animal and reptile “breeding greenhouses” and pet stores, freeing their inhabitants. I’ve even heard there were panthers and monkeys and gazelles running free for a while. The panthers are encouraged – they’re a native species and quite rare – but the rest of the animals were rounded up, supposedly.’

Supposedly. I knew where this was leading, unfortunately. ‘But the pythons are still out there.’

‘Yes, a nearly eight-foot female was caught recently and she had eighty-seven eggs inside her, can you believe that? I’ve heard that we could have tens of thousands – even a hundred thousand – pythons slithering around the Everglades these days.’

Missy looked west as I had, but kind of wistfully, I thought. ‘It’s very hard to be sure. What they do know is that reported sightings of white-tail deer have dropped by ninety-four percent, and the entire population of rabbits in the Everglades has been wiped out.’

Jesus. ‘The pythons are eating them, too?’

‘Yes, which you’d think would be good news for the alligators.’

‘But it’s not? Good news, I mean.’

‘No. Alligators eat rabbits and deer – in addition to birds, turtles and fish, of course – so both the alligators themselves and their food supply have been affected by the pythons.’

Missy looked up from her work. ‘Did you know that nearly sixteen-hundred people signed up to hunt Burmese pythons last year to bring down their numbers? But all those hunters managed to kill only sixty-eight in a month. Apparently pythons are slippery devils.’

Or their hunters didn’t have enough incentive. ‘Maybe they should send Fendi and Jimmy Choo in there after them,’ I said.

‘For designer handbags and such?’ Missy looked thoughtful. ‘In fact, a couple of local places are paying fifty or a hundred dollars a snake. After processing and all, a custom-made python purse can bring, like, twelve hundred dollars, shoes easily a thousand, and jackets nearly five thousand.’