Amy Siewe goes out at night, sometimes alone, to hunt pythons.
She said it’s a passion that started when she was a child, but it’s not without risk. The python huntress talked to Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsdenon Florida’s Fourth Estate about her mission to rid Florida’s Everglades of the invasive reptiles.
Siewe has bagged several Burmese pythons and knows how to “work the animal.”
“They could easily crush us in a second without even thinking about it,” she said.
She said she “really had an appreciation for their power” when she caught a 9-foot python and it wrapped its tail around her leg for leverage.
She described it as “no big deal” because “that’s what they always do.” But, then things took a turn.
“This thing vice grips me, vice grips my calf and it felt like either my calf muscle was going to explode or my bone was going to break. I have never felt anything like it in my life and it was only a nine-foot python,” Siewe said.
She added that it usually easy to deal with a python when an encounter goes wrong.
“All I have to do is let go and it will take off,” she said. “It will probably bite me a couple times, but it will take off.”
Aside from this unexpected encounter things are a bit more quiet when the Python Huntress heads into The Everglades. She even describes the experience as cathartic, but she is always paying attention, ready for the next takedown, even if it’s not her own catch.
Recently she was driving down the road when she happened to come upon Jake Waleri wrestling a 19-foot, python. It was the largest documented Burmese python ever captured in Florida.
“I saw him go on the ground which was a little risky,” Siewe said.
Then she hopped into action.
“So I told two of the kids to pull the tail, I got the coil off of his shoulder, I came around and told him to sit all the way on top of her, and so then I wrapped her mouth up,” she said.
Waleri also talked to Florida’s Fourth Estate about the experience.
“It felt incredible. I thought this was just a big snake at the time. I thought it would maybe be 16 or 17 feet. I never dreamed that it would actually be the record holder,” he said.
Waleri donated the snake to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.
But he kept the skin for himself.
“I’m going to turn it into some leather and make a nice trophy out of it,” he said
If you are interested in being part of the solution, you can join the Python Elimination Program or learn the ropes from Siewe, who also teaches people the basics of Burmese python hunting, and make some big money along the way by taking part in the Florida Python Challenge.
Learn more on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download it from wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can also watch anytime on News 6+.
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