WASHINGTON -- Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) spent Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill begging leaders to add the Burmese python to the list of injurious species.

An 8-foot Burmese strangled a 2-year-old girl in Sumter County just last week and Senator Nelson says the federal government needs to do more to keep the snakes out of the country.

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Senator Nelson used the skin of a Burmese python to show just how large they can grow; it stretched about 16 feet.

In the past ten years, there is record of the snakes attacking 17 humans and killing seven of them. One of the victims was 2-year-old Shaiunna Hare in Sumter County.

"They will lie in wait, perfectly still, waiting for their prey," Nelson argued.

Nelson says the snakes don't belong in homes or anywhere in the U.S. because they are indigenous to Burma.

The federal and state governments are pouring millions into the Everglades to restore it, but Nelson says the Burmese python is slowly taking it over. There are an estimated 150,000 of them slithering in the everglades right now.

Alligators are even having a hard time warding them off.

"We found a 6-foot alligator inside of a python," Nelson said, pleading with the Senate committee to do just one thing. "By a one word change in the law and restricting it to not all the constrictor snakes but just this one."

Nelson says he has been working for the past three years to get Burmese pythons out of Florida. He fears they will spread as far as California in search of their ideal conditions, moist, humid climates.