MIAMI HERALD (Florida) 16 April 06 Family outing: snake hunting - Wayne Conn gives his daughters a fun time and environmental education on trips along backroads looking for snakes. (Susan Cocking)
Members of the South Florida fishing community know captain Wayne Conn, 56, as the skipper of the popular Reward party boat fleet at Miami Beach Marina. Conn's specialty is escorting groups of school kids on the water for outings that combine fun fishing with a little environmental education.
But not many know that when Conn has a day off to spend with his teenage daughters, one of their favorite activities is snake hunting.
On weekends and school holidays, Conn and daughters Kayla, 14, and Alyssa, 16, can be found rumbling down Snake Road through the Seminole Indian Reservation in west Broward, or along the levee roads of the Holey Land and Rotenberger Wildlife Management Areas scouting snakes from Conn's pickup truck.
Conn says they mostly practice catch-and-release.
''If I do keep them, I just fatten them up for a while and let them go. Usually, I take them way back in the reservation,'' he said.
Kayla and Alyssa share a couple of pet snakes at their Pembroke Pines home -- Snickers, a three-foot-long boa constrictor (not caught in the wild) and a red rat snake that their father got for them.
Kayla does not see anything unusual about this. Once she brought her pet snakes to Hollywood's Nativity School for a St. Francis-style blessing.
''Everybody was so scared,'' she said.
Did she attempt to educate her classmates about which species are venomous and which are not?
''Most people don't listen, but yes,'' she replied.
Out of the 44 species of snakes found in Florida, only six are venomous: the diamondback rattlesnake, pygmy rattlesnake, canebrake rattlesnake, coral snake, copperhead and cottonmouth.
Conn and his daughters have come upon a couple of cottonmouths in their years of tooling around the backroads, which they left alone. They've seen none of the other venomous species. And no Burmese pythons yet, despite the flurry of recent sightings.
''Unless I know exactly what it is, I tell them not to touch it,'' Conn said.
On a recent Sunday, Conn and Kayla explored their usual snake haunts on the Indian reservation and the levee roads while Alyssa opted to sleep in. Early morning temperatures in the 50s kept the snakes in hiding.
Conn said he used to find a lot more snakes as a child in Hollywood during the 1960s, when development pretty much stopped at University Drive and Stirling Road dead-ended in a cow pasture.
''I want my kids to see this before it disappears,'' he said, pointing to the wide-open fields on the reservation.
As the sun rose higher and the air grew warmer, the wildlife started waking up. Alligators appeared all along canal banks, and finally Conn and his daughter spotted a couple of thin, black ribbon snakes ahead on the dirt road.
He stopped the truck, and he and Kayla got out, brandishing snake hooks, which resemble golf clubs with curved, barbless shafts.
But as they got closer, both ribbon snakes darted down the bank and into the grass.
Shrugging, they got back into the truck and headed off again. Crossing into the Holey Land west of U.S. 27, Conn followed a line of utility poles and saw a green snake in the middle of the road. Turned out it was dead, apparently run over. Conn drove on, shaking his head.
A few minutes later, they came to a ribbon snake basking in the sun in stuporous languor. Conn walked right up to it and grabbed it behind the head, meeting no resistance -- that is, until the tiny snake realized it had been captured. Then it tried ineffectually to snap at him.
He and Kayla took turns holding it. Then he let it go on the side of the road where it slithered quickly away.
Compared to previous snake hunts, it had been a pretty successful morning.
''We've gone to parks and spent all day and never see one,'' Conn said. ''But that doesn't matter. You're out with your kids all day,'' Conn said. ``It's quality time.''
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