Tuesday Night Ophidian Thread

Should’ve been Monty night, come to think of it.

Snake and Eggs? Floridians Could Soon Eat Invasive Pythons
clickorlando.com | December 12, 2020 | Chris Perkins

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Donna Kalil estimates she’s eaten a dozen pythons in the last three years or so.

That’s not including the python jerky, says Kalil, a python hunter for the South Florida Water Management District. “I eat that several times a week because I take it out with me on python hunts and I eat it out there.”

State officials would like to see more people like Kalil putting pythons on the menu — not because of their nutritional value but as another way to encourage hunting to control their population.


Python is good in chili — or so Kalil says. She also likes it in stir fry.

But her favorite way to eat python is to pressure cook it for 10 or 15 minutes, sauté it with onions and garlic, and add it to pasta and sauce.

Kalil, a Miami native who gave up her real estate job to hunt pythons full time, said the meat is rubbery and tough if you don’t prepare it properly.

“It’s a wonderful tasting meat,” she said. “But it is limiting.”

That’s even true in her house. Her husband won’t eat her python pasta.

“I don’t want say it’s an acquired taste,” she said. “It’s an acquired thought process.”

A 7.5-foot python generally yields a 5-foot long filet and 3 to 4 pounds of meat.

“To put it on a plate like sautéed or whatnot in one piece would look sort of interesting,” she said.

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3 Comments

  1. Yes it does. I remember eating rattlesnake on a vacation once. Humans are pretty much designed to eat anything that doesn’t eat us first. The only thing stopping us is convention and taste tolerance.

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