“Okay, this one’s for real!” said the director. “Action!”

Soon Derek was crawling through Mickey Cray’s manicured palmetto scrub, whispering dramatically into a bug-sized microphone clipped to his shirt collar:

“As if the Everglades weren’t dangerous enough, in recent years this tropical river of grass has been invaded by lethal predators from another continent-Burmese pythons! Imported by wildlife brokers for the exotic pet trade, hundreds and hundreds of baby pythons got scattered throughout the Glades when Hurricane Andrew destroyed breeding farms west of Miami. Now all those cute little buggers have grown into fierce levithanians, some of them twenty feet long!”

“Cut!” the director called.

“What’s wrong?” snapped Derek. “That bit was totally brilliant.”

“The word is ‘leviathan,’ not ‘levithanian.’ ”

They attempted the scene nine more times, but Derek couldn’t get the pronunciation right. Finally the director gave up. “Forget it, okay? Just say ‘monster’ instead.”

Derek nailed it on the first take:

“Now all those cute little snakes have grown into voracious monsters, some of them twenty feet long! They can swallow a whole deer, a panther and, yes, even a human being.

“Today I’m crawling through the most remote, untouched and dangerous stretch of the Everglades, following the trail of an enormous wild python-and look! There she is!”

With a cameraman on his heels, Derek wriggled forward and pounced with a triumphant cry upon Beulah. He locked both hands two feet below her head, which is just about the worst place to grab a snake. Wahoo was surprised that Beulah didn’t twist around and sink her chompers into Derek’s fat face.

“I’ve got her! I’ve caught the beast!” he crowed.

The python wasn’t particularly concerned. She hooked her tail around one of Derek’s ankles but didn’t even tighten up. Grunting and huffing, he rolled back and forth on the ground, shaking Beulah by the neck, trying to provoke her to fight back.