Florida has tried a lot of things to deal with its Burmese python problem. Organized hunts, cash prizes, robot bunnies. Now one Everglades City restaurant owner has added pizza to the list.
Dustin Crum, the self-described “swampetreneur” behind Wildman’s Pizza, Pasta and Python, spent the past ten days accepting dead snakes as legal tender. His offer ran concurrent with the 2026 Florida Python Challenge, the annual state-organized competition that wrapped July 19 and paid out $25,000 in prizes to hunters willing to wade into the Everglades and remove as many Burmese pythons as they could find. Crum’s pitch was simpler: bring him a recently and humanely killed snake, walk out with a free large specialty pizza.
“I’m the first place in the world to accept python as currency,” Crum told NBC Miami. “So you can trade in a python for a pizza.”
The arrangement worked for everyone involved. Hunters who caught snakes without a clear plan for what to do next—local kids, mostly—got fed. Crum got raw material. Nothing went to waste. “The fat I use to make the snake oils for the skin, creams, soap,” he said. “The bones we make jewelry, everything gets used.” He also tops pizzas with python meat and sells iguana slices, though Florida health regulations keep him from charging money for any of it. “I just gotta give it away for free,” Crum said.
Florida Man Offers Free Pizza to Anyone Who Brings Him a Dead Python
The timing aligned with a competition that has grown substantially since its 2013 debut. Last year’s challenge drew nearly 1,000 participants from 30 states and Canada, who collectively removed a record 294 Burmese pythons. The grand prize went to Taylor Stanberry, a Naples contract hunter who pulled 60 snakes in ten days—the most in the event’s history and the first win by a woman.
The urgency behind all of this is warranted. Conservationists estimate between 100,000 and 300,000 Burmese pythons currently live in Florida, where they function as apex predators against local wildlife. They’ve been decimating native bird, mammal, and reptile populations since their introduction in the 1970s, and females routinely lay around 70 eggs at a time. Wildlife officials have called the python problem one of the most intractable invasive species crises on the planet, and the annual challenge—however many snakes it pulls—remains a drop in an extremely large, extremely reptile-filled bucket.
Crum, at least, is making the most of what people bring him.
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