They're Dropping Millions of Mice Into the Everglades — And It's for the Pythons

On a Tuesday morning, wildlife technician Marcus Reyes leaned out of a helicopter hovering low over the Everglades, reached into a canvas sack, and began dropping dead mice into the trees below. Hundreds of them. Each one stuffed with something. Each one attached to a small cardboard streamer so it would catch in the canopy instead of hitting the ground. He wasn't crazy. He wasn't rogue. He was following a carefully designed government protocol — and what was inside those mice was the same thing sitting in your medicine cabinet right now. Scientists are proposing to drop millions of these across the Everglades. And the target isn't birds. Isn't alligators. It's the Burmese python — and the reason this plan might actually work is the most surprising part of this entire story.