Word: python
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Bergeron is a smart gladesman. He pulls up to the tree-covered hummock, and almost as soon as herpetologists Shawn Heflick and Greg Graziani hop off the airboat armed with snake hooks, they find a 10-foot Burmese python slithering through the mud. Graziani swoops down and grabs the angry serpent's tail while Heflick goes for the other end. After a brief struggle, during which Heflick gets his hand bloodied by a sharp snake tooth, they pull the python's head, with its camouflage-like design, into their clutches. "It was trying to cool off deep down there...
...begins Day One for Florida's first officially designated python posse. The population of the voracious nonnative snakes has exploded so frighteningly in the past decade--as many as 150,000 are estimated to be crawling through the Everglades--that the state has launched a hunting offensive to eradicate them before they wipe out the endangered species native to the region, like wood storks and white-tailed deer. Or before they become a human threat: in early July, a 2-year-old girl was strangled to death in her crib by a nearly 9-foot python illegally kept...
Since then, Florida officials like Bergeron and Senator Bill Nelson have ramped up the python-purge campaign. On July 17, FWC chairman Rodney Barreto issued the first snake-hunting permits for state lands, and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar did likewise for Big Cypress National Preserve. (Hunting is banned in Everglades National Park, but Salazar is considering allowing it in this case.) Researchers are even developing a python drone, a small remote-controlled airplane that can detect the constrictors. For now, only reptile experts like Graziani and Heflick have permission to hunt the serpents. (Using firearms against the reptiles...
...large part, Floridians have created their own mess. The Sunshine State loves exotic pets, and sales of pythons, most imported from Southeast Asia, reached $10 million in the state last year. But too many buyers, after discovering what a large and expensive chore caring for these snakes can be, simply get rid of them. And because there aren't a lot of adopt-a-python agencies, the reptiles are often dumped in the wild. As a result, Florida in 2008 instituted new ownership requirements, such as $100 annual permits, proof of snake-handling skills and implantation of microchips in pythons...
...will have brought the proper attitude to the movie: it hardly needs wisecracking robots, for it not only carries the seeds of its own destruction but hands them out like a Burpee's salesman. An early scene, flashing back to 17th century France, plays like a lost Monty Python sketch. For its modern-day Paris scenes, the movie borrows some set pieces (including the blowing up of the Eiffel Tower) from Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Team America: World Police, an action comedy performed by puppets, from whom the expressionless performers appear to have taken their acting cues...