Watch a gator vs. python do battle at Shark Valley. And the winner is ...
Gators versus pythons in the Florida Everglades is a death match in which neither species — the native alligator or the invasive Burmese python — can claim bragging rights.
Sometimes you win, says the gator. Sometimes you don’t, responds the python.
This time, the gator won.
A Florida man, Rich Kruger, was out on the Shark Valley bike trail off the Tamiami Trail in Miami-Dade on Monday when he spotted an adult alligator chomping down on a python he says had to be at least 10 feet long.
So he did what most spectators at a death match would do: He shot a video and posted it to social media.
Kruger posted his 40-second long video clip to Facebook and, in its share text, marveled: “BEST video so far ... over 10’ long python.”
By that point, the python had no fight left. It was apparently already dead by the time Kruger came upon the scene. The large gator chomps twice near its head as it lifts the python in the air a bit. After a violent shake, with the python still in its jaws, the gator lazily settles down atop its prey in the water at the embankment.
We’d say the toothsome beast looked content, but then the video ends.
The story was different last June when a gator needed a little human help when it found itself on the losing end of a gator vs. python match.
Snake hunter Mike Kimmel was driving near Everglades Holiday Park, west of Pembroke Pines, with his pal when they saw a 10-foot python coiled around a gasping four-foot alligator. Kimmel grabbed the snake by the head and it dropped the gator, which took the opportunity to flee.
Years earlier, in September 2005, Everglades National Park was the setting for a bizarre draw in which a dead 12.5-foot-long Burmese python had apparently swallowed an American alligator. The tail and hind limbs of the dead alligator protruded from a hole in the bloated mid-body of the dead python. And the python was missing its head.
This story was originally published February 20, 2019 at 11:07 AM.
