A gripping account of the python's takeover of the American South and the race to stop a devastating ecological crisis.

At night in the Everglades, men with spotlights hunt Burmese pythons – giant snakes released through the exotic pet trade that now dominate Florida's wetlands. They devour deer, bobcats, alligators and endangered panthers, driving mammal populations down by more than ninety per cent. The invasion is now moving north.

Journalist William Kearney follows the hunters, scientists, dog teams and Indigenous communities trying to slow the spread, while revealing the python as a ruthless evolutionary marvel – able to survive months without food, lay a hundred eggs, and rapidly adapt.

Blending immersive reporting, natural history and climate science, The Serpent and the South asks whether this perfect predator can be stopped before the rest of the South becomes its hunting ground.



William Kearney has been a writer and editor of both newspapers and magazines for more than 15 years. Today, he is Florida's leading journalist covering the Burmese python invasion. As the South Florida Sun Sentinel's environmental editor and reporter, he has penned dozens of python-related stories, which routinely outperform all other content, garnering as many as 250,000 page views and long read times.