Ever since he was a boy, Mickey had kept snakes for pets-green tree snakes, king snakes, rat snakes, water snakes, ring-necked snakes, garter snakes, even a few poisonous rattlers and moccasins. Mickey had caught them all. He still found them fascinating and mysterious.

Now the Everglades was overrun with foreign pythons that were eating the deer, birds, rabbits, even alligators-it was really a rough scene. The pythons weren’t supposed to be there; Southeast Asia was their natural home. So the U.S. government and the state of Florida had declared war on them.

Wahoo’s father understood why: the snakes were totally disrupting the balance of nature. A single adult Burmese could lay more than fifty eggs at a time. They were among the largest predators in the world, growing to a length of twenty feet, and at that size had no natural enemies. Even panthers avoided them.

Because of his knowledge and experience, Mickey Cray had been asked to go into the swamps and capture as many of the intruder reptiles as he could. The state was paying decent money, but Mickey said no. He knew that every python he caught would be euthanized, and he couldn’t bring himself to take part in that. He liked snakes too much. That was the problem.

He sat down on the ground near Beulah and she glided slowly in his direction. Her brick-sized head was elevated, the silky tongue flicking slowly.

Mickey grinned. “When’s the last time you got fed?”

Beulah responded by clamping down on Mickey’s left foot and throwing a meaty coil around both his legs.

“Easy, princess,” he said.

The python wrapped upward with another coil, and then another. Mickey quickly locked both arms in front of his chest to protect his lungs from being crushed, but he was out of shape and Beulah was extremely powerful.