6 September 14-20, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | News | letters | coNteNts | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | I t’s 10 p.m. on the fifth night of the 2023 Florida Python Challenge, and Amy Siewe is cruising nearly 11 feet above the pavement on her new “snake deck.” It’s a modified perch on the back of her white pick-up truck with elevated roll bars that have been tricked out with bright lights, cup holders, and cell- phone cradles. Her fiancé, Dave Rob- erts, captains the vehicle at ten miles per hour as Siewe stands upright on the truck bed, her blond hair billowing in the wind. “Hey, it’s the snake lady!” shouts a young man in a passing Honda Civic. Siewe shakes her head and continues to aim her spotlight along the road’s shoulder, waiting for the sudden sheen of squirm- ing scales or a snake’s head periscoping out of the sawgrass to reveal itself to her. “It took me a minute to learn what I was looking for,” says Siewe, her blue eyes fixed on the moving landscape. “The little nuances and patterns in the grass, the way that it shines a certain way.” The sun has set, but the Everglades is still hot, sticky, and awake. Gnats and mosquitos flock to each exhale. Leopard and cricket frogs croon a croaky chorus in the slough. Marsh rabbits and cot- ton rats scurry along Tamiami Trail as invasive Burmese pythons attempt to cross it. Even though it’s a Tuesday night during the least hospitable time of the year, it’s the hunt for these elusive, slithering reptiles that can grow up to 20 feet in length that have scores of registered participants from all over the country out here in the muggy darkness for a chance to win $30,000 during the ten-day, state- sponsored python removal competition. After all, it’s the wet season, the nonbreeding period for py- thons, when these critters can slither up to four miles in three days through the muck and, with a seemingly insatiable appetite, devour the mam- mals, birds, and other native wildlife in their path. “Pythons spend most of their time not moving, so we have to get them when they’re on the move,” Siewe explains. “Ninety-five percent of this is right time, right place.” Hunter for Hire In the four years since Siewe moved to South Flor- ida from Indiana, where she worked as a real estate broker, she has caught more than 500 Burmese py- thons, making her one of the most prolific and rec- ognizable faces on the Everglades’ invasive snake-hunting scene. During the wet season, May through November, Siewe hunts up to five nights a week, from 8 p.m. to the wee hours before dawn. But after working for three years as a state python- removal contractor with the Florida Fish and Wild- life Conservation Commission (FWC) and later the South Florida Water Management District, a new demand in the swamp has forced Siewe to make yet another career pivot: Requests by tourists as far away as Germany have prompted the python assas- sin to resign from her $13-an-hour job to lead guided hunts that cost roughly $1,500 a trip. “I have people that have gone on African safari hunts and other big-game hunts all over the world wanting to come here and catch pythons because they’ve never done it before,” she says. “One time, I got a family that chose python hunting over a Dis- ney vacation.” On a complimentary guided hunt with a New Times reporter, Siewe explained that she couldn’t Photo by Dave Roberts
