A Miami man caught & killed the longest Burmese python ever captured in Florida. Jason Leon was driving late at night on May 11 in a rural area of southeast Miami-Dade County when he saw about 3 feet of a snake sticking out of the bushes.Leon pulled an 18-foot, 8-inch female from the roadside. The snake wrapped itself around Leon’s leg & he called for assistance. He used a knife to kill the snake. The snake weighed 128 pounds & was not carrying eggs. The previous record for the longest python caught in the wild in Florida was a 17-foot, 7-inch, 164.5 pound snake caught in August in Everglades National Park.

Florida prohibits owning or selling pythons for use as pets & federal law bans importation & insterstate sale of the species.