10-foot python found dead in Largo preserve

LARGO — About 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, John Rivard was walking in the Largo Central Park Nature Preserve when he saw something big floating in a stormwater treatment pond.

It turned out to be a dead 10-foot python.

"I was a little surprised,'' he said. "It was not something I expected to see out there.''

The pond is next to a boardwalk where children and families hike and not far from a picnic shelter, a driving range and a country club.

Rivard, 49, a Clearwater real estate investor, found a branch, fished out the python and started taking photos. He said the snake weighed 80 or 90 pounds.

Officials from the Largo Recreation Parks and Arts Department got to the scene at 8:30 a.m. and measured the snake, said Michael DePappa, assistant parks superintendant.

He said it's the first python found in the preserve in the four years he has been at his job. He doesn't know whether it had been living in the preserve or whether someone dropped it off. "It could have possibly been a house pet,'' DePappa said.

It had no puncture wounds or other signs of trauma, so how it died is a mystery.

City workers buried the python in an empty lot.

"It was pretty stinky and smelly,'' DePappa said.

Bill Turner, a herpetologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, identified the snake as a reticulated python, which is native to Southeast Asia.

Named for the net-like pattern on its body, it can grow to 28 feet long and is one of the two largest snakes in the world.

He said the reticulated python eats such things as primates, pigs, dogs and cats, even a type of bear called a sun bear.

"There are incidences of them eating humans,'' Turner said.

The proliferation of large, dangerous nonnative snakes has been a concern in Florida and the Tampa Bay area recently.

On July 1, a 2-year-old Sumter County girl was strangled by an 8 1/2-foot pet Burmese python that got loose.

That same month, an 8- to 10-foot boa constrictor was found lounging in a St. Petersburg neighborhood.

In August, a New Port Richey couple discovered an 8-foot boa constrictor in a box outside their home.

Eileen Schulte can be reached at schulte@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4153.