WHAT IS THE LARGEST SNAKE?

Talking about largest snakes, last week one of my postings was entitled, A COMING TRUMP DICTATORSHIP? Someone e-mailed me this link of Senator Chris Murphy's speech on the Senate floor, also sounding an alarm about President Trump's coordinated effort to dismantle democracy. Watch it!

The Florida Museum reports that the Titanoboa is the largest snake that ever lived. Perhaps up to 50 feet long 2500 pounds and 3 feet wide, was the largest predator on the planet after the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. However, 23 million years ago came the Megalodon. Okay, a deviation, for this was not a snake. Several films, but there are so few remains, that there can only be estimates of size: perhaps 47 feet to 80 feet long and at most, 200,000 pounds. However, this is about 10 times larger that an adult Great White Shark. Here are two comparisons.

Today, the Green Anaconda is the longest and heaviest snake in the world: 30 feet and 550 pounds. Well, then again, other reports indicate that the Reticulated Python can reach 32 feet, but it weighs only up to 320 pounds. The heaviest Burmese Python caught in the annual Florida Python Challenge was 19 feet long and 215 pounds. Had a hundred eggs.

Here is recent video of one in the Everglades. And, by the way, if you have nothing better to do and want to win $10,000, the 2025 Florida Python Challenge is from July 11 until July 20. Size does not matter, the victor is the participant who removes the most Burmese pythons. Info on registration here. Over the past dozen years of the challenge, more than a thousand pythons have been caught.

By the way, one of the world's smallest snakes can be found in Hawaii. We are home to the Brahminy Blind Snake (can detect light), which is non-venomous. About 6 inches long, it feeds on ants and termites. Came to Hawaii in the 1930s in potting soil from the Philippines. Alas, this is not the smallest snake, which is the Barbados threadsnake (below) only discovered in Barbados in 2008. It is only 4 inches long.

One concern in Hawaii is about the potential infestation of the Brown Tree Snake (BTS) from Guam. At least eight of them were found in Hawaii between 1981 and 1998, associated with movement of civilian military vehicles and cargo from Guam. The USDA National Wildlife Research Center puts the possible cost to Hawaii of the BTS at $1.7 billion/year if introduced to Hawaii. If you see this snake, call 911 or 643-pest immediately!

For the record, the BTS:

Is nocturnal, and mostly lives in trees,
Can be up to 9 feet long.
Native to the South Pacific, New Guinea and Northern Australia.
Introduced to Guam in the 1940's hidden in cargo.
Responsible for the extinction of up to 13 forest bird species and three types of lizards. Terns, noddys and shearwaters no longer next on Guam.
Because of the absence of birds and lizards, there has been a rise in the abundance of insects, which affects crop production.
The BTS causes frequent electrical power outages by climbing power lines and getting into transformers and electrical boxes.
At one time, the population was around 50 snakes/acre. Has no predator on Guam. Efforts were made, and the infestation is now down to as low as 10 snakes/acre.

I don't know of any snake songs, but, some people do this.

Here are the top 50 snake songs.
And 50 more.
ZZ Top with Tube Snake Boogie.
You've heard this "snake" song, which is an Arabian folk song, sometimes called The Streets of Cairo and "the snake charmer song."

Of course snake charmers in India don't use any of the above.

Here is one using a flute.
Traditional street performer with his Cobra.
Beautiful Indian Music called Snake Charmers.
Generally used is the pungi, a Hindu fold music reed pipe instrument.

Here is The Snake Charmer from Scotland to end this divergence.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

IS FLORIDA AGAIN THREATENED BY A MEGA TSUNAMI FROM LA PALMA?

From the morning New York Times : Here is a graph comparing average daily COVID-19 deaths/100,000 people, and the USA is doing something really wrong: The difference between our country and Europe is that we have flubbed the availability of cheap and ubiquitous at-home RAPID testing. They have covered this base. There are two obvious problems: The FDA is much too bureaucratic about quickly approving anything related to this pandemic, including testing. We seem stuck with the test that takes one to several days to get your result. The good news is that the Biden administration has finally realized this problem and through executive order hope to soon flood the market with take home testing that at first will be subsidized to make it affordable. Now, on to getting everyone vaccinated, especially 5-11 years olds ( and we are close to getting to making this happen ), the undereducated and Republicans. What to do about the latter two? The other concern is whether we a...

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