Despite its name, The Daily Beast is not a per diem review of large, threatening wild life. Well, usually anyway.
Even after parting ways with Gerald Posner, Tina Brown's internet concern hasn't kept its eyes off South Florida. This week they sent former Newsweek senior reporter Catharine Skipp into the everglades with Capt. Jeff Fobb, the head of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue's Venom Response Bureau and "a self-described 'anarcho-capitalist non-propertarian,'" to go Python hunting.
Fobb ends up leaving Skipp holding the tail end of a 10 foot, 50 pound African Rock Python while he chases after another snake. Thankfully Skipp is still alive after the ordeal, and found time to get PETA's opinion of Florida's upcoming open season on "reptiles of concern."
So far, local animal-rights activists have not spoken out loudly against the coming eradication effort. But that could change once the hunters descend--hunters more interested than Fobb in snake meat, for example, or the resale value of their skin. Says Martin Mersereau, director of PETA's Emergency Response Division: "The last thing we need is a clumsy and crude massacre of these animals who, through no fault of their own and due to the exotic-animal trade and the ignorance of people who pay into that, ended up abandoned in the Florida wilds. If we need to get rid of these animals, they need to be rounded up and euthanized by qualified wildlife experts. Don't put a bounty on their heads and expect every yahoo with an itchy trigger finger to do this right."
Whoops, guess PETA wouldn't like our (sarcastic) call to arms upon the announcement of the season.
[Daily Beast: How To Catch a Giant Python]
