2 S. Fla. men come face to face with exotic snake

MIAMI (WSVN) -- It took two South Florida hunters to wrangle one of the massive snakes.

It was man versus snake in the everglades. Two python hunters armed with a helmet camera came across a monster snake.

It was 16 feet and eight inches long and weighed about 130 pounds. "I freaked out when I saw it," said Ruben Ramirez. "It was like the movie Anaconda. That's how big it was."

The female Burmese Python was found on a canal bank. It's believed to be at least 10-years-old and it's no easy task getting it out of the cage. "I grabbed it by the tail," said Ramirez. "I couldn't hold it and it kept on pulling and pulling and pulling into its borough."

The snake put up a fight. It's strength was no match for the hunter. "By the time he got there," said Ramirez, "there must have been about 3-feet left in my hand."

The beast, was almost the one that got away. A second hunter arrived just in time. The men had to dig the snake out of it's borough. "I could not stop it from going into it's hole," said the other hunter.

Native to Southeast Asia, the snakes have exploded in South Florida, breeding in the hot humid conditions. Many blame pet owners who release the snakes in the wild when they get too big to care for.

The government banned the import of the invasive species earlier this year. "It does us no good to put in dollars of investment in the Everglades, only to have these giant snakes to come in here and undo the good that we are doing."

On average, the Everglades is home to tens of thousands of Burmese Pythons, but there's nothing average about this big girl. "Our average snake is anywhere from six feet to ten feet long. That's the average size," said George Brana.

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