“There's a good chance we never would have found him,” said Scott Hardin, exotic-species coordinator for the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “This was always my concern, what would happen when an exotic species like the python intersects with an endangered species. Here it's happened, and it has the potential to be a serious problem.” Hardin later assumed the seven and a half foot snake was either an escaped or released pet by someone who realized the python " become a burden". Walter Meshaka, senior curator for the State Museum of Pennsylvania, stated that pythons are very good swimmers and, therefore, it seemed reasonable to assume it had swum from the Everglades into the Key Largo area refuge. From 2008 to 2013, a USGS study focused on detection and removal of pythons on the refuge yielded very few snakes.