Dog Names Ending in te

In the Florida Everglades, a new threat to native wildlife has been booming right along with the exotic pet trade. Burmese pythons, usually purchased as infants at a manageable foot and a half to two feet long, grow quickly and if properly cared for they can reach around seven feet long at just six months of age. By the time they are four years old, they reach their adult size, between twelve and twenty-three feet in length with some of the larger specimens weighing in at around two hundred pounds, a much more difficult reptile to keep housed and fed. When they become too unwieldy to care for, some individuals simply let them go. While this is always a bad decision, in many states the snakes simply expire, being unable to find food or handle the climate of the area, in the tropical climate found in the state of Florida they are thriving. Around three hundred and fifty specimens were believed to roam the area in 2002, but these huge reptiles have a lifespan of twenty and twenty-five years and females lay clutches that range from several dozens to a hundred eggs at a time, and some estimates put the number of Burmese Pythons in the Everglades at around one hundred and fifty thousand. They dietary habits are not only impacting the number and variety of birds and mammals that are found in the area, but they also pose a threat to pets and small children when they venture into more populated areas. 

In 2005, Lori Oberhofer came up with a novel weapon against the population explosion, a six-month-old Beagle puppy dubbed Python Pete. He started out with training sessions that were around ten minutes long, where he tracked a cloth that was stored with a large python in Oberhofer’s possession and was rewarded with either time to play or bits of raw liver. Python Pete became quite skilled at tracking pythons, and garnered a great deal of attention on the subject, but when he moved his work out to the field, the heat and humidity of the Everglades proved to be too much for the pup, and he wasn’t able to manage more than about fifteen minutes of work at a time without putting himself at risk. He did pave the way for a joint effort between NPS, the University of Florida, and Auburn University to train new detection dogs that were better suited to the climate, and while the snakes continue to be problematic in the region, sniffer dogs have proven to be a valuable tool in reducing the overall population.