Many people have hobbies that they enjoy outside of work, like hiking, golfing, scrapbooking (does anyone still do that?), and various other pastimes.
Now notice that I didn’t get super specific, because I left out “hobbies” that people in Florida like to do, which is usually doing random things to get arrested and create outlandish headlines, or like these people, wrestling with 15-foot snakes.
I’m not sure why you would choose to do something like this, but some people love the thrill of the hunt, and like to hunt very dangerous creatures. Jack Cronin, a Florida teenager, is one of those thrill-seeking people.
The state of Florida was putting on something called the “Python Challenge” (of course they were), and Cronin was participating in it for the very first time. He had caught snakes before, but had never encountered a python.
Python hunting had long been on his bucket list, and he finally got the chance to do it during his first ever trip to Everglades National Park over the weekend. Once they got there and started searching, things escalated pretty quickly when they set their eyes on a massive python.
Cronin told CBS4 Miami:
“We go over and there’s just a snake’s head sitting there, the size of my head. I shined the flashlight back through the woods to see the body and couldn’t even see the end of it. Then I’m like, of course, ‘I wanna jump on it.’
So I jumped on it, grabbed its head, then the thing went nuts and it turned into a wrestling match.”
I’m no expert on python hunting, but I would assume that you don’t want it to turn into a “wrestling match.” Cronin wouldn’t have known if he was doing it right or not, since he actually had never caught a python before:
“I was like ‘That’s a big snake.’ That was my first python I ever jumped on. I’ve caught little snakes, that was my first python I’d ever seen.”
The colossal snake measured in at 15 feet and 6 inches, and weighed almost 100 pounds. However, Cronin and his friends missed the official weigh in cut off for the Python Challenge by 5 hours, so the python capture didn’t even count.
Whether it counted or not for the Python Challenge didn’t really matter to the Florida teenager. He was just excited to have the bragging rights, and warned all pythons out there that he would be back:
“Man, it’s like an adrenaline rush like no other. We’ll definitely be back out there trying to get another big mama.”
Yeah, because after you have a brush with death with one of the largest snakes you’ve ever seen, you ought to get right back out there and try to do it bigger and better.
Some people are insane…
