Snakes alive

Perhaps you’ve heard of the illegal immigrant invasion in South Florida that is wrecking the place, causing havoc, panicking people and in general being more terrifying than a 24-hour marathon of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

In hopes of doing something about the problem, the State of Florida is raising awareness of the problem by letting people have a $25 license to go out, hunt down and kill these illegal immigrants. The immigrants I refer to are cold-blooded, dangerous, hungry and will squeeze the life out of anything they can catch. Unfortunately, I’m not talking about politicians or lawyers.

South Florida is now home to the largest snakes on the planet in addition to gators, crocodiles, poisonous lionfish that stalk the great plains around the reefs and Donald Trump among other extreme hazards. Several kinds of constrictor snakes, including the anaconda as made famous by Sir Mix A Lot in his rap song Baby Went Through The Wall When She Saw Dat Snake, now inhabit condo complexes and gated communities across South Florida without paying homeowner dues.

In exchange for the $25 fee, Florida is offering the participants a chance to get into the South Florida swamps to bog down, get lost, meet alligators up close and personal and possibly be attacked and eaten by a snake the size of small airplane. The Sunshine State has an annual hunting competition where prizes are offered to whomever is eaten by the most – I mean kills the most snakes and another prize for whoever kills the longest one.

The state is also being very specific about how these giant snakes may be killed. Women are not allowed to scream and levitate while a man charges in, sees the snake and immediately leaves to find someone more capable of dealing with wildlife. Hunters have “an ethical obligation to ensure a Burmese python is killed in a humane manner,” the state says.

As the snakes are most likely to be found in a swamp, kitchen or running for office, running over them with a giant armor-plated tank and slamming on the brakes is probably not going to work. Besides which some of the snakes might try to mate with or eat the tank.

So how does an intrepid snake hunter dispatch one of these critters? They can be shot with a “safe, but effective caliber.” This being South Florida, safe and effective begins with inter-continental ballistic missiles and goes to fully automatic, high-magazine-capacity assault pitbulls.

According to state officials, snakes may also be dispatched with a knife, machete or old Taylor Swift CD, provided this “results in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the Burmese python’s brain.” I am not kidding. That comes straight from the regs. Voting for Kamala Harris was not mentioned as a way to send one of these Nope Ropes to their eternal rest.

Killing the snake by forcing it to participate in a Reality TV show or professional wrestling is unethical, immoral, illegal and is being shopped around right now as the next hit reality TV show for Hollywood.

For those of you wondering, “neither the Florida Department of Health nor the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services have stated that python meat is safe to consume.” In other words, fire up the grill!

Now if we could get just the federal hunting authorities to issue similar licenses to hunt Congress, we’d be set.