Feral Kingdoms: A Transcontinental Fever Dream of Rabbits, Pythons, and Human FollyTwo countries. Two invasions. One shared moral: never underestimate an imported animal with time on its hands.By Luis Gonzalez
Boiling FrogsRabbits: Australia’s Fluffy Biological ApocalypseAustralia didn’t plan to be overrun by rabbits—it just happened the way all bad decisions happen: one aristocrat with a gun habit, too much land, and the hubris of believing nature would behave. Thomas Austin released 24 rabbits in 1859, thinking they’d make for pleasant hunting. Instead, they made for continental catastrophe. Within decades, those soft little hay-vacuums multiplied into biblical hordes, chewing through farmland like a divine punishment for British colonial optimism.
Attempts
to stop them ranged from earnest to deranged. Fences—gigantic ones—meant to hold back the tide. Poison campaigns. Viral warfare in the form of myxomatosis and later rabbit hemorrhagic disease. Australia basically turned into a mad scientist’s lab with the goal of outwitting a creature whose superpower is algebraic reproduction. Some attempts worked temporarily, others failed spectacularly, and the rabbits—eternal, multiplying, fluffy insurgents—remain a permanent feature of the landscape.
Pythons: The Everglades’ Cold-Blooded CoupAcross the world, the Everglades is running its own biological noir. Burmese pythons—escapees, releasees, and descendants from the exotic pet boom—slithered into South Florida and found paradise. No predators. Plenty of prey. Endless swamp highways to stretch out on. So they multiplied, growing fat on raccoons, rabbits, deer, birds, whatever wandered past the wrong piece of sawgrass at the wrong time.
The population exploded. The ecosystem buckled. And amid the biological carnage, Florida did the most Florida thing possible: it made a reality-TV contest out of killing them. Hunters with GoPros, environmental scientists with grim statistics, old-timers with shotguns—they all joined the python war effort. It’s part sport, part science, part desperate ecological triage.
Two Continents, One Human Lesson in Biological RegretBoth invasions sprang from a familiar root: people believing they can import nature without consequence. Australia thought a few rabbits were harmless fun. Florida thought keeping fifteen-foot snakes as household decor was charming. Now both places are locked in generational warfare with animals that never asked to be there but adapted with ruthless efficiency.
What’s Left to Do?Australia continues using viruses, targeted control programs, and high-tech monitoring to keep rabbit numbers manageable. The Everglades relies on organized hunts, research-driven removal, and a steady drumbeat of public education that can be summarized as: “Stop buying giant snakes, you absolute maniacs.”
Both crises show the same ironic truth: ecosystems are delicate until the wrong species enters—then they become gladiator arenas.
The Final WordThe rabbits hopped their way into legend. The pythons slithered into infamy. And both stories end with the same moral: nature bats last, and it bats hard, especially when we’re the ones who pitch the first bad idea.
LG
