Jake Waleri couldn’t come to the phone Thursday night. Just days after he caught the longest Burmese python ever recorded in Florida, measuring 19-feet long, he was out for another late night of hunting.
Waleri, 22, of Naples, and a group of fellow python hunters captured the 125-pound invasive behemoth, a female, in the Big Cypress National Preserve early Monday morning and brought it to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida in Naples to be measured, the nonprofit said in a news release.
Before Monday, the previous record-holding snake, captured in October 2020, measured 18-feet, 9-inches. Another female, it was captured not far west of Miami in Everglades National Park.
The python was slithering on the grassy side of a road in the nature preserve when Waleri went behind it and pulled its body toward him, a video he posted on his Instagram shows, the snake’s head facing him. The snake lunged toward Waleri, and within a split second, he grabbed its neck with his right hand.
With both hands wrapped around the python’s neck, Waleri wrestled on top of it, the snake’s mouth wide open, staring Waleri in the face at one point while he laid on top of it. With the help of his group, Waleri stood up while still holding the snake’s head with two hands.
Waleri’s Instagram shows python hunting is a regular occurrence for him. He posed with a 17-feet, 10-inch python around his shoulders in the nature preserve last August.
There’s no shortage of them in Florida. The invasive, nonvenomous constrictors can be killed humanely, without a permit or hunting license.
State officials each year offer thousands of dollars in cash prizes to winners of the Florida Python Challenge, which will run from Aug. 4 to the 13th.
The nonnative species has established a breeding population in South Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The population was initially centered in the Everglades in Miami-Dade County but are now considered established from slightly south of Lake Okeechobee to Key Largo and across the state from western Broward County to Collier County.
One of the largest snakes in the world, Burmese pythons have few natural predators in Florida’s wildlife and can decimate local populations of native or endangered species. They’ve been documented eating alligators.
The U.S. Geological Survey says the “severe” decline of mammals in the Everglades have been tied to Burmese pythons.
“The mammals that have declined most significantly have been regularly found in the stomachs of Burmese Pythons removed from Everglades National Park and elsewhere in Florida,” the survey’s research found. “Raccoons and opossums often forage for food near the water’s edge, which is a habitat frequented by pythons in search of prey.”
Female Burmese pythons can be exceptionally detrimental to the ecosystem. They can lay between 50 and 100 eggs at a time, according to the FWC.
A 16-foot female python captured in the Everglades recently had over 60 eggs inside, according to media reports.
Researchers with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida nonprofit hold a record, too, having caught the heaviest Burmese python on record in June 2022, a female that weighed 215 pounds, their news release said.
“We had a feeling that these snakes get this big and now we have clear evidence,” Ian Easterling, a biologist with the nonprofit, said in the news release.