This is the Everglades that they paste on brochures. Summer rains have raised the waters, and lily pads blooming in the searing sun give the sprawling wetlands a Monet mood. But as his airboat glides through the sawgrass lanes 30 miles west of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commissioner Ron Bergeron is looking for the worst invasive menace that the "river of grass" has ever faced. "They like to sneak onto islands like this one," says ...

Floridians are generally not flummoxed by the variety of reptile species invading their state. Even when pythons started turning up on the peninsula in large numbers a few years ago, most residents laughed off the huge, not-native snakes as yet another imported nuisance, little worse than some condo developers. But that nonchalance vanished in a heartbeat last week when 2-year-old Shaiunna Hare was strangled to death in her crib by a 9-foot-long Burmese python kept as a pet, illegally, ...

Is there a filmmaker in the world with worse luck than Terry Gilliam? He was directing Heath Ledger in "The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus," when the actor died -- and it's not the first time he has lost a leading man. Jean Rochefort didn't die eight years ago, but Gilliam had to abandon "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" after a few days when 70-year-old star Jean Rochefort became seriously ill and a flash flood washed away the entire ...

In the midst of the ongoing culture wars, can it be a good idea to put out a comedy about two Stone Age men who wander into the Bible? Harold Ramis thinks so. "Year One," which he directed, concerns two men -- played by Jack Black and Michael Cera -- who leave their home and, in their travels, meet biblical characters such as Cain, Abel, Abraham and Isaac. Among the locales: ancient Sodom, which "didn't seem worse than Las Vegas ...

Juan Lopez reads meters with one eye and looks for snakes with the other. Lopez is a member of the "Python Patrol," a team of utility workers, wildlife officials, park rangers and police trying to keep Burmese pythons from gaining a foothold in the Florida Keys. Officials say the pythons -- which can grow to 20 feet long and eat large animals whole -- are being ditched by pet owners in the Florida Everglades, threatening the region's endangered species and ...