Florida cops are reporting the capture of a large snake who neighbors suspect was feasting on their cherished feline pets. 
 
 Port St. Lucie police officers nabbed the 12-foot, 120-pound Burmese python Friday after responding to reports of an extremely large snake on a block with homes. Police said the python killed one neighborhood cat and may be responsible for the recent disappearance of several others. 
 
 WPEC-TV in West Palm Beach said Sgt. John Holman found a dead cat and then found the snake hidden in waist-high brush. Other officers responded to help him remove the snake. 
 
 Florida banned Burmese pythons in 2012. Police said the captured python belonged to an owner who had a license to keep it. ||||| Bobby Hill, a snake control agent for the South Florida Water Management District, with an 18-foot Burmese python he killed on Tuesday about five miles north of Tamiami Trail in the Everglades. 
 
 The Florida Everglades has produced yet another monster Burmese python — the second 18-footer captured in the last year. 
 
 Bobby Hill, a python control agent for the South Florida Water Management District, bagged the giant female around noon Tuesday on the L-28 levee about five miles north of Tamiami Trail. 
 
 District spokesman Randy Smith said the carcass would be shipped to the University of Florida where biologists working to stop the spread of the invasive species will examine the remains and verify its length and weight. 
 
 “It looks to be about 18 feet,’’ said Smith. “It could very well be a state record.’’ 
 
 The water district’s levees have produced some of the largest snakes captured in South Florida. The cold-blooded reptiles commonly crawl atop the rock embankments to warm their bodies in the sun, particularly on chilly days. 
 
 Last May, a snake collector named Jason Leon captured what currently ranks as the largest Burmese python found in the wilds of Florida. He spotted it at night along a canal in southeast Miami-Dade and had to slice off its head to finally subdue the powerful creature. The Florida Fish and Wild Conservation Commission verified its total length at 18 feet, 8 inches. The snake, a female, weighed in at 128 pounds. 
 
 The previous record, in 2012, was a 17-foot, 7-inch female captured by scientists in Everglades National Park. That snake, pregnant with 87 eggs, weighed just over 164 pounds. 
 
 In their native habitat, Burmese pythons are believed to reach 20 feet or more. Biologists consider the exotic predators a major threat to native wildlife. Necropsies have shown that they eat just about everything that lives in the Everglades, from birds to alligators, and at least one study in 2012 suggests the boom in pythons has decimated the small mammal population in the park.
– A giant python's reign of terror may be over. A Port St. Lucie, Florida, police officer found the 12-foot, 120-pound creature two days ago—at the scene of one of its alleged crimes. The snake was discovered in brush not far from a dead cat, WTSP reports. Locals and police believe the cat was one of several feline victims whose disappearance has been blamed on the alleged cat-eating snake, Fox News reports. Though Burmese pythons were banned in Florida two years ago, this snake's owner had a license, police say, per Fox. Experts think pythons have been eating mammals native to the area, WTSP notes, and though this python scare is over, there could be more to come, CBS 12 reports.