Flying into Florida for a winter vacation? If you look out the plane window once you’re near your destination and the ground seems to be writhing, it’s because the entire state is covered with pythons. Checking out the bathtub in your hotel room? Python. Looking in the back seat of your roller-coaster car at Walt Disney World? Python. Rental-car trunk? Restaurant toilet? Rest-stop trash can? Curbside mailbox? Python, python, python, python.

Matthew Wright

Shawn Heflick, a herpetologist, hunts Burmese pythons, a nonnative species.

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 Video Excerpt: 'Attack of the Giant Pythons'

 

That, at least, is the impression you may have after watching the delightfully titled “Invasion of the Giant Pythons,” Sunday on PBS’s “Nature.” The news that Burmese pythons are loose and breeding in the Everglades and other parts of Florida has been known for a few years, but this program makes clearer the extent of the problem and some of the consequences.

How many pythons are out there? “Thousands,” we’re told. “Perhaps tens of thousands.” The program’s narration, given an extra jolt via the vocal talents of F. Murray Abraham, keeps referring to “the python army.” Motorists have to worry about running into pythons the way drivers up north fret about deer. (In a weird bit of synergy, when the program checks in on a researcher who has been cutting pythons open to see what they’ve eaten, we learn that one appears to have dined on an adult deer.)

The snakes can be 26 feet long and as thick as telephone poles, we’re told. But it turns out that not all of the blame for the infestation lies with pet owners who have released their pythons into the wild. Some got there courtesy of hurricanes that wrecked exotic-pet warehouses. We are left to make our own judgment of people who import and keep pythons and other exotic animals. That judgment is likely to be: “Idiots.” The federal government has proposed banning the importation of pythons and some other snakes.

More important than the possibility that drivers might run into or over pythons is that the snakes pose a problem for Florida’s many federally protected species. There is particular concern, the program says, that they may become established in the Florida Keys, home to an endangered wood rat. We see a line of traps that has been set up to try to stop pythons headed for that region. But earlier footage of a python devouring a grown alligator leaves the impression that these powerful predators are going to go wherever they want, traps or no traps.

If you’re already in Florida watching this program, you may find it too unsettling and feel the urge to change the channel. Be careful, though, as you’re poking between the couch cushions looking for the remote. Python.

Nature

Invasion of the Giant Pythons On PBS stations on Sunday night (check local listings). Produced by Image Impact Ltd. and Thirteen in association with WNET.org. Nigel Marven, producer. “Nature” produced by Thirteen in association with WNET.org for PBS. Fred Kaufman, executive producer; William Grant, executive in charge.