She pulled the kayak alongside a mud bank and stepped out, the cool muck squelching between her toes. Her python hook was in her hand. Ten feet away, half-hidden in the roots of a giant strangler fig, was a mass of scales. It wasn't one python. It was three. A large female, easily fourteen feet, and two smaller males, all tangled in a breeding ball.
Brittany laughed, wiping a smear of mud from her cheek. “And most folks would have turned around at the first alligator.” She looked back at the dark, silent glades. “We’re not most folks.” brittany borges guardians of the glades bikini
Brittany Borges had spent countless hours beneath the blazing Florida sun, navigating the twisted mangroves and tea-colored waters of the Everglades. As a key member of the Guardians of the Glades , her days were usually measured in snake hooks, muddy boots, and the satisfying weight of an invasive Burmese python bagged. But today was different. Today was about reaching a remote shack of a herpetologist named Crockett, who had radioed about a nest of pythons so large it threatened to destabilize a critical wading bird rookery. She pulled the kayak alongside a mud bank
But the female python sensed the intrusion. Uncoiling with terrifying speed, she slithered not away from Brittany, but toward the shallow water where the kayak was beached. If she reached the main channel, she would vanish. It wasn't one python
Then she heard it. A deep, ominous hiss followed by the thrash of heavy coils.
Crockett handed her a towel. “You know,” he said, a rare grin cracking his weathered face, “most folks wear a little more armor to wrestle a fourteen-foot snake.”
Crockett’s gruff voice crackled back. “Twenty minutes out. Don’t be a hero.”