JACKSONVILLE, Fla. _ Florida got its first official glimpse of a wild Burmese python on Oct. 24, 1979. Nobody knew where it came from. Maybe it had escaped its owner, a reptile fetishist perhaps. Maybe it marked the first of countless intentional snake dumps into the Everglades by exotic pet owners who had no idea what they were getting into.
Floridians got a horrific wake-up call in 2009 when an 8-foot, 6-inch "Burm" escaped its cage inside a Sumter County home and devoured a 2-year-old girl as she lay sleeping in her crib. Testimony indicated the snake had gotten loose 10 times before the fatal attack.
The most popular chaos theory dates to August 1992, when Hurricane Andrew unleashed a Category 5 catastrophe across South Florida. Amid the wreckage was an imported-reptile breeding facility on the edge of the Everglades, where as many as 1,000 of the carnivorous constrictors reportedly went missing.
Whatever the gateway, more than 40 years after the Asian native first surfaced, its successors have swept like a plague the length of the peninsula. Migrating in every direction from Florida's sheltering "River of Grass," following storm floodwaters to higher ground, the Burms have fanned out into central Florida and beyond, with reports rolling in from as far north as Jacksonville and Chipley in the Panhandle.
Arrayed against the impossible numbers of these prolific breeders _ 300,000, by some estimates _ stand 25 state-contracted bounty hunters. Only one has a reality TV show. His name is Dusty Crum. Crum's nickname is "Wildman." Wildman chases after the gargantuan invaders with nothing but his bare hands and bare feet.
"I'm the baddest-ass python hunter in the world, son!" declares the Myakka City resident in self-impersonation, repeating a war cry becoming famous with growing Discovery Channel audiences. "WOOO!"
But this is no game. The one that almost crushed him to death was caught on video by Discovery. It's been nearly a year now and Crum's girlfriend still can't watch it.
