Slow. Deliberate. Every step measured, every movement calculated. He'd done this a million times. Approached snakes this size with nothing but his hands and a hook and the quiet confidence that came from understanding these animals in a way most people never would. He respected them. All of them. The pythons included, even though they didn't belong here. They hadn't asked to be released into an ecosystem that couldn't handle them. That was on humans, not the snakes.
But this one was killing one of his gators, and it had to be stopped.
While his body was controlled, his pulse hammered in his throat as adrenaline coursed through his body.
He needed to get behind the head. Pin it with the hook, just long enough to place the bolt stunner against the skull. One clean shot. Instant unconsciousness. Then the pithing tool to finish it. Quick. Humane. The way it should be done.
Ten feet away now. The smell hit him—musk and blood and the raw, earthy stink of reptile stress hormones flooding the air. The gator's eyes were half-closed, its struggles weakening. Running out of time.
Eight feet.
The python's head shifted. Just slightly. A subtle repositioning that said it knew something was there. Something that wasn't prey but might be a threat.
Six feet.
Trent sucked in a slow breath as he raised the hook, angling it behind where the head pressed against the gator's body. A second ticked by. The snake shifted slightly. Simultaneously, Trent blew out the air trapped in his lungs and struck.
The hook caught the snake behind the skull, pressing it down into the dirt. The python's body reacted instantly—coils loosening from the gator, muscles surging with an almost electric power. The gator's jaws flew open, a hiss exploding from deep inside its body, raw and ragged—the sound of something that had been seconds from death and had suddenly found air.
The snake's tail whipped around like a bat, thick as Trent’s thigh, catching him across both shins with a force that buckled his knees. The world tilted. He went down hard, his shoulder hitting the ground, the hook ripping free from the snake's neck as his grip failed. “Fuck,” he mumbled.
“I have the shot.” Dove's voice from the porch. Sharp. Ready.
"Don’t. Not yet.” He rolled, trying to get his feet under him, but the tail was already wrapping around his left leg, coiling with a speed that defied the animal's size. Thick muscle cinched against his calf, his knee, tightening with that same patient, relentless pressure he'd watched it use on the gator.
His heart hammered. Not panic—he didn't do panic, not with reptiles, not after thirty-plus years of living alongside them—but a healthy, urgent awareness that he had about ten seconds before this got significantly worse.
He grabbed the air gun from his shoulder, fingers finding the grip with the ease of a tool he'd used many times. The snake's head was free now, risen off the ground, weaving in a defensive posture, tongue flicking, trying to locate the threat. If it struck, it would hit him in the face or chest from this distance. Burmese pythons weren't venomous, but a mouth full of rear-facing teeth sinking into flesh wasn't something you walked away from without a trip to the ER or worse—being placed in a coffin.
He shifted his body, ignoring the squeeze on his leg, the pressure building toward pain. Angled the air gun upward. The snake's head swayed. He needed a shot at the top of the skull, behind the eyes. The sweet spot where a single pneumatic bolt would do its job and the animal wouldn't feel a thing.
The head dipped.
He fired.
The bolt connected. A sound like a muffled punch, and the snake's body went slack. Not dead—unconscious. The coils around his leg loosened like a rope coming undone, the massive body sagging against the ground in a boneless heap.
Trent was on his feet in an instant. He ripped the remaining coils from his leg, the scales rough against his skin, and grabbed the pithing tool from his belt—one quick, precise thrust into the brain stem.
The snake was gone.
No suffering. No drawn-out death. Just a switch flipped off, the way nature didn't do it, but humans owed it to the animals they'd displaced.
But the gator was still tangled.
Three and a half feet of panicked, oxygen-deprived alligator with jaws that could snap off a man's hand at the wrist. Its eyes were open now—wide, wild, pupils blown. It hissed again, a wet, guttural sound, its tail slapping weakly against the dead snake's body. Disoriented. Scared. And likely to bite whatever came close.
“It’s okay, Clarkson. You’re gonna be just fine,” he whispered. “I’ll be right back.” He grabbed the bucket and brought it closer. He lifted the chicken quarter with the hook, threading it onto the curved end so it dangled like bait on a line. With his free hand, he carefully peeled the dead snake's coils away from the gator's body, working quickly, keeping his fingers well clear of those jaws.
The gator snapped at the air. Once. Twice. Testing. Looking for something to fight.
"Easy," Trent murmured. "Easy, Clarkson. Nobody's gonna hurt you."
He held the chicken quarter out on the hook, low to the ground, letting the smell do the work. The gator's nostrils flared. Its head tracked the meat, instinct overriding panic. Hunger was a hell of a motivator, even when a gator had nearly been crushed to death.
Slowly, carefully, Trent guided the hook toward the moat, step by step, the chicken quarter swinging gently. The gator followed, its gait unsteady, weaving slightly like a drunk navigating a parking lot. But it followed. Because it was a gator, and gators followed food the way rivers followed current. It was just what they did.
At the moat's edge, Trent swung the chicken quarter out over the water. The gator lunged, snapping the meat off the hook with a crack that echoed across the property, and slid into the dark water with a splash. The steep concrete on this side would keep it from climbing back up. Safe. Contained.
