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Loyalty points and cashback offers just found their strangest competitor as one Florida pizzeria invented its own currency, and it slithers. At Wildman’s Pizza , Pasta and Python in Everglades City , a large specialty pizza costs one dead Burmese python . Owner Dustin Crum proudly told NBC News that he is the first person in the world to accept “python as currency”, turning Florida’s invasive snake problem into a very unusual pizza deal.

Trade a python, earn a pie

The idea was inspired by the Florida Python Challenge . The annual contest which ran from July 10 - 19 awarded up to USD 10,000 to hunters who removed the most Burmese pythons from the Everglades, where experts estimate as many as 3,00,000. Crum accepts recently and humanely dispatched pythons in exchange for any large specialty pizza. “You can trade in a python for a pizza,” he told CBC. The barter is popular with local kids. “They catch them. They don’t know what to do with them. They’re hungry. They want pizza,” he added.

Nothing goes to waste

The snake doesn’t just buy the pizza — it might become the topping too. Crum serves free python-topped pies, describing the meat as “gamey” but tasty. He can’t legally sell them because the meat isn’t processed by a licensed butcher. “I just gotta give it away for free,” he told NBC News. And the recycling doesn’t stop there. “The fat I use to make the snake oils for the skin, creams, soap. The bones we make jewelry from, everything gets used,” Crum told CBC. His restaurant has also become an unofficial hangout for Python Challenge hunters, showing that in Florida, the road from swamp to supper can be surprisingly short.

– Compiled by Monodeep Dey