America is home to some of the most extraordinary wildlife on the planet. Bears in Yellowstone. Alligators in the Florida Everglades. Bald eagles soaring over the Smoky Mountains. Ah, we can hear the sound of freedom! It is a country where encountering a wild animal in its natural habitat is part of the experience, majestic, humbling, and deeply American.
And then there is New Jersey, where a woman watering her flowers on a perfectly ordinary afternoon looked down and found an 8-foot Burmese python sliding through her backyard. This is not the kind of wildlife encounter anyone signs up for, and seeing what it had for dinner even less so.
