Kevin Pavlidis and his team captured a reticulated python in Puerto Rico after a report that it was strangling a pet cat. The snake measured 18 feet, 4 inches, the largest reticulated python ever measured in Puerto Rico.
Pavlidis said it took him 20 minutes to track the snake down after the call. He also said the crew measured it on camera after wrestling it back to the street, where eight people later posed while holding it up.
Kevin Pavlidis in Puerto Rico
Proyectos Retic got the call about the snake and the homeowners had already driven it away to save the cat before Pavlidis arrived. He said, “We drove there as fast as possible, but the python was nowhere to be seen.”
He described the search this way: “I went off into the jungle using all my years of python tracking skills and it took me 20 minutes to track the python down. When I finally found it I could only see a few inches of white skin on its chin, but I knew exactly what I was looking at! I knew it was big, but I didn't realize how big it was until we wrestled it all the way back to the street and measured it.”
Puerto Rico and South Florida
Pavlidis said the snake problem in Puerto Rico has been breeding and slowly expanding for about 25 years. He said the population is still relatively small, but warned that if the work stops, it could become as serious a problem as Florida.
He tied the effort to wildlife protection, saying: “Catching invasive snakes is all about saving native wildlife animals since the native animals are eaten by these invasive predators.”
The longest measured reticulated python on record is a 23-foot, 8-inch female called The Baroness, or Ibuan, from the Maros region of South Sulawesi in Indonesia. Against that standard, the Puerto Rico snake was smaller, but the record for the island still makes it the clearest sign yet of how large the invasive snakes can grow there.
Proyectos Retic
Pavlidis said he and Proyectos Retic are working to shrink the invasive population on the island and slow the spread as much as possible. The article’s own complication is plain: the snakes have spread for about 25 years, yet the removal effort is still trying to catch up.
That is the question left for Puerto Rico now — how many invasive reticulated pythons remain to be removed before the population gets beyond control.
