The pale yellow house in Davie contains creatures that could paralyze your lungs, destroy your blood cells or wreck your kidneys.
Danger – Venomous Reptiles warns a sign on the second floor, where about 30 snakes hiss and coil in securely locked, aquarium-like cases landscaped with tree branches, logs and rocks. A monocled cobra flares its hood in one case. In another, a king cobra lurks inside a log. Other cases contained eyelash vipers, Gaboon vipers and Chinese sharpnose vipers.
Their owner, Ryan Martinez, is one of 288 people or organizations in Florida with a permit to keep venomous reptiles or large constricting snakes. Of these, 246 cover cobras, vipers and other venomous snakes. Miami-Dade County leads with 32 permit holders, followed by Broward with 28, Hillsborough with 16 and Orange and Palm Beach, with 15 each.
“There’s just something prehistoric about it,” said Martinez, an experienced wildlife handler who works at Zoo Miami. “There’s something about an animal that produces venom that really speaks about evolution. Venomous snakes have this power to hit once and leave it alone and let nature take its course.”
Many conservation and animal rights groups oppose the private ownership of these reptiles. Since most are not native to Florida, they pose the risk of escape or release, where they could reproduce and thrive in the wild like the Burmese pythons that have colonized the Everglades.
“They’re incredibly dangerous,” said Debbie Leahy, captive wildlife specialist for the Humane Society of the United States. “These are creatures that can attack in the blink of an eye. If someone is bitten, the anti-venin, especially for an exotic species, is difficult to locate. Emergency responders are put in danger when they respond to calls about venomous snakes. These are just as dangerous as somebody having a pet tiger in their backyard. It may even be more dangerous, since they can hide so easily.”
Unlike Burmese pythons, which for years were available to anyone with a credit card, venomous reptiles require a state permit that’s very difficult to obtain. Applicants must prove at least 1,000 hours of experience with the family of snakes they want to keep, produce letters of recommendation and submit to an inspection that shows their animals are secured and that the required written bite protocols are in view.
As a result of the strict standards, snake owners say there is far less chance these snakes would end up in the hands of irresponsible people who would let them go in the wild.
“The state of Florida has the best regulations and rules for keeping them,” said Sloane Russeck, of Delray Beach, who has kept cobras, rattlesnakes and many other venomous reptiles. “With what they require, you really have to be dedicated. It’s only committed, serious people.”
Although he no longer keeps snakes, he maintains his permit because it was so difficult to get and because it allows him to relocate unwanted snakes that would otherwise be killed, taking them to people licensed to keep them.
“They’re fascinating, misunderstood animals,” he said.
Keeping venomous snakes is not an easy hobby. Martinez spends about $200 a month on frozen rodents. And then there are the risks.
Martinez was trying to clear some shed skin from the eye of a monocled cobra when it sank a fang into his thumb, injecting venom that can cause respiratory failure and paralysis. Relatively calmly, considering the circumstances, Martinez followed standard snake-bite protocol: First, secure the snake so anyone coming to help doesn’t get bitten, too.
He grabbed his bite protocol book and headed to the hospital. Refusing anti-venin for fear of an allergic reaction, he was put on a saline drip until the venom cleared from his system.
The Florida Poison Information Center – Miami, which serves Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Lee, Collier and Monroe counties, logged 686 venomous snake calls in the past two years, of which just nine were non-natives, such as cobras.
But the rarity of exotic snake bites can be misleading, said Dr. Jeffrey Bernstein, the center’s medical director.
“Eventually they all get bitten,” he said. “Even the professional handlers get bitten. If you’re going to keep a pet cobra, you have a very high risk of getting bitten by it. It’s playing with fire. Many of them have been bitten more than once. They get bitten and get away with it, in the sense that they live, and they continue doing it. We’ve had some pretty sick patients, hypotensive, with weakness and paralysis, and have brought them back with antivenin. “
Like most venomous snake owners, Joe Switalski become interested in them early in life, never quite losing touch with his inner eight-year-old.
“When I was old enough to realize I couldn’t have a dinosaur as a pet, snakes were the next best thing,” he said. “I came across a pygmy rattler in the Everglades. To a 13-year-old boy, this is the coolest thing ever. I was hooked.”
He estimates he owns 55 to 60 snakes, all kept in an escape-proof room at his house in Plantation. From Central and South America, he owns eyelash vipers and fer-de-lances. From Africa, he has black and green mambas. And from Australia he has inland taipans, considered the most venomous snakes in the world, with venom that can cause paralysis and respiratory failure.
“There’s such a mystique about them, an appeal and misunderstanding about how they are,” he said. “A lot of them have reputations that are not deserved, especially taipans and mambas.”
When he sees snakes crossing the road, he stops and helps them, a kindness extended to an eastern diamondback rattlesnake, for which he used a snake hook.
Like many reptile hobbyists, he got to experience their venom for himself. He was bagging a Borneo tree viper for a friend when the snake sank a fang through the bag into his thumb.
“It was excruciating pain,” he said. “It felt like someone took a blowtorch and two scalding hot needles and took a hammer and was jamming them into my thumb.”
He went to the emergency room, received two vials of anti-venin and recovered.
Will Nacewicz, of Hollywood, feeds his 30 snakes live rats, which he raises himself, buying 50-pound bags of food for the doomed rodents.
He owns native species, such as the water moccasin and eastern diamondback rattlesnake, a species he hopes to help recover through breeding and releases into the wild.
Aside from the rattlesnake, the favorite among his snakes is a Gaboon viper, an African species whose two-inch fangs are the longest of any snake. So taken is he with the beauty of his snakes that he preserves dead ones in jars of alcohol.
“To me, they’re a lot prettier than non-venomous snakes,” he said. “I have two bush vipers from Asia that are neon green with yellow spots. The danger factor – I do like that. How many people do you personally know who have a house full of venomous snakes?”
dfleshler@sunsentinel.com, 954-356-4535
Database reporter Ann Choi contributed to this report.
