I did not know this. There is a breeding population of Burmese pythons in the Everglades.

[Thursday morning follow up]

Here’s more on the story from AP:

Overwhelmed with pets that eat more than they do, python owners decide to release their snakes into the wild. It’s so common in the Everglades, Snow’s had to start a python hot line.

And there the Asian natives breed and find a comfortable home in the Everglades’ water, heat and vegetation. They have no predators.

Pythons have also discovered suburbia, said Capt. Ernie Jillson, who helps run the Miami-Dade County fire department’s snake squad. They catch around 20 pythons a year.

Three years ago, a 15-footer stopped traffic when he spread himself across a four-lane road. Last year, another 15-footer gave a 60-year-old woman quite the jolt when she walked outside to find the snake sunbathing on her patio. And rescue workers had to save a cat from the 10-foot python that was chasing it around the backyard pool.

Lawmaker Poppell says he’s no snake lover and doesn’t understand people’s fascination with the slithery creatures.

“How can you want something for a pet that looks at you when it’s hungry?” he said. “I don’t want something to look at me as food, I’d rather they (pets) come to me for food.”

Don’t you just hate it when your planet leaks?

Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology have calculated that about 1.12 billion tonnes of water leaks into the Earth each year. Although a lot of water also moves in the other direction, not enough comes to the surface to balance what is lost.

Eventually, lead researcher Shigenori Maruyama and his colleagues believe, all of it will disappear.

A billion years, eh? Better hurry and pass a treaty against it or something.

Let me be the first, if not the last, to blame George Bush.

“If I get sick, please don’t pray for me.” Or, as he says, at least don’t tell me about it.

“If I get sick, please don’t pray for me.” Or, as he says, at least don’t tell me about it.

“If I get sick, please don’t pray for me.” Or, as he says, at least don’t tell me about it.

I’ve never heard of this, but apparently others have:

…as I was about to step out the door, I looked down and there was a dead baby kitten on our mat. The mama cat is wild and has never let us anywhere near her. A couple of hours later my hubby went to take out the trash and there was another dead kitten in the same place. He buried them out in the field. I just went outside for a smoke, and there is another one, that makes three.

My question is, since the mama cat is wild, why would she keep bringing her dead babies and putting them on our doorstep? Is that normal for cats?

So one commenter had a thought, which occurred to me as well:

Mother cats can be clearly seen to actually *care* (emotionally) for their kittens, and will fight to the death to protect them, and will risk death to save them – anybody remember “Scarlet” the fire-cat?

Why this mom-cat would bring her dead kittens to your door… hard to tell. Possibly she thinks that you might be able to bring them back.

Wow. Just realized what a heartbreaking thought *that* is.

Yes. Our cat treats us as her bed and her slaves, but she also knows that ultimately, we have a lot of power over her. So one wonders what they think of us, and just how much power they think we have, should we, in our beneficence, choose to wield it.

…which is not mine. I still have to go with the “very large in the middle, and tapering off to be much smaller at each end” theory myself. No, this is a new theory about why they went extinct. They were sleep deprived.

Jonah has a good point:

I don’t like it when we create conditions hotter than the interior of the sun without knowing how we did it. What if I’m in the kitchen and I accidentally put the wrong stuff together and it happens? That’d be so not cool, literally.

Well, actually, it’s a whole new family. Of crustacean:

The animal is white and 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) long — about the size of a salad plate.

In what Segonzac described as a “surprising characteristic,” the animal’s pincers are covered with sinuous, hair-like strands.

Wonder what it tastes like?

Researchers have discovered that s3x with a partner is much better than m@sturb@tion. What would we do without researchers?