Maybe I should go into the snake-catching business – or better yet, processing. ‘Word gets out and the pythons will be wiped out in no time.’
‘That would be a very good thing,’ Missy said absently, her attention seemingly back on the banner.
‘I’m sure the alligators would appreciate it.’ Not to mention Thumper. And Bambi.
‘I’m sure they would,’ Missy said, looking up, ‘but I don’t want you to think there aren’t consequences for the pythons, too.’
‘Beyond being turned into Giorgio Armani stilettos?’
‘No, no,’ Missy said, a little impatient with me. ‘I was talking about the snakes eating alligators, especially after they’ve had a big meal of their own. If you go on YouTube you can probably pull up photos and even a video or two of some pythons that have exploded during the digestive process.’
Oh, my. In my head, I’d been visiting the designer shoe floor of Barney’s – and actually being able to afford something – and here was Missy yanking me back to the smorgasbord that the Everglades had become.
And with thoughts of rabbit, inside alligator, inside python, no less. The concept of turducken – a de-boned chicken, stuffed into a de-boned duck, in turn stuffed into a de-boned turkey and baked – had always seemed exotic enough, without imagining the Everglades own sushi version of the same. The one remaining comfort being that human beings weren’t on the menu.
At least until the pythons ran out of rabbits, deer and alligators.
SIX
‘If you want to get technical,’ Missy Hudson snapped me out of my snake-themed reverie, ‘pythons don’t really eat their prey so much as crush it so they can swallow it whole and digest it.’
Lovely. ‘And this differs from “eating” in what way?’
Missy looked up, apparently startled by the edge in my tone. ‘Well, no chewing, of course.’
‘Oh.’
‘That’s nothing, though. You want to know something really scary?’
I hadn’t realized that what we’d already been talking about didn’t qualify. ‘Sure.’
‘They’ve found a number of African rock pythons in the Everglades. Including a pregnant one.’
‘And that’s worse than a Burmese python?’ Or tens or hundreds of thousands of them?
‘Oh, yes. The rock pythons are Africa’s largest snake – over twenty feet long. And the fact one was pregnant means they’re reproducing here.’
‘And not-too-tightly-wrapped people kept those things as pets, too?’
‘Yes, can you believe it? The herpetologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville said the species is so aggressive they come out of the egg striking. His theory is that breeders didn’t expect them to be so vicious – and hence so unmarketable to consumers – that they released them into the wild, too. The fear is the African rocks will mate with the Burmese and spawn a large and powerful population of hybrids – like a kind of Super Python.’
Just gets better and better. ‘You sure seem to know a lot about these creepy-crawlies.’
‘Well, most Floridians who live near the Everglades have heard the news reports, or at least should have. Knowledge is power. Besides,’ Missy was back to picking at the tape, ‘I needed to research them for Breaking and Entering.’
‘There’s a snake in the book?’ Other than the trouser variety, I meant.
‘Well, yes. Rosemary wanted Kat, the umm, heroine to have an, umm … encounter with one. Or was it two?’ The corner of the tape came loose. ‘Damn.’
The subject of our conversation had gone from bad to worse. It was one thing to exchange views with someone my own age, but Missy couldn’t be more than six years older than my son Eric, who was in his second year of college.
‘Why don’t I hop up into the train and open the window?’ I suggested. ‘You can hand me the rope and I’ll secure it to something.’
‘That’s a wonderful idea! This is the passenger car, so—’
In my haste to get away from the images in my own mind, I didn’t wait to hear the rest of Missy’s instructions.
Entering the train, I turned right and nearly ran into a broad-shouldered man. He was wearing a boxy three-piece suit with a gold watch chain, presumably leading to a pocket watch in the vest. ‘Can I help you?’ he said, holding open a sliding door into the next car.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was just looking for the passenger car.’
‘This is the club car,’ he said, hiking a thumb behind him. ‘I’ll be serving coffee and espresso drinks in a few minutes.’