Then the ‘glades began to be drained and King Sugar and sodfarms entered the picture. A few years later the Everglades were little more than a memory and sugarcane fields became the norm. Changes were already happening back then but a lot of changes were overlooked for many years. Pumphouses sprang up and the Everglades rat snakes and occasional corn snakes sought seclusion within. Against the pumphouses were sheets of replacement tin and between the sheets were Florida kingsnakes, a few scarlet kingsnakes, and more corn snakes. Shallow irrigation ditches were dredged through the canefields and to these came rodents and more southern leopard frogs than you could count. Various natricines (water, garter and ribbon snakes) and cottonmouths found the amphibian repast too good to bypass and in turn these drew more and more kingsnakes that found not only a never ending food supply but ample cover amidst the jumbles of lime-rock that were plowed up during the irrigation canal construction.

And then the snake hunters who already knew of the manna within and around the pumphouses, found

the canefield habitats that harbored what then seemed to be a never ending number of the kingsnakes that fed on the frogs and water snakes along the canals and once in a while an indigo that fed on the frogs and the other snakes including the kingsnakes.

Admittedly this is a modified, very condensed, and personalized view of the 20th century canefield snake hunting days. In those early days, before the rampant insurance problems, the canefield supervisors turned a blind eye to the almost daily presence of snake hunters. But as you might imagine this is no longer the case today. I’m glad that I was able to experience those “good old days.”
Canefield pumphouses are now nearly all gone and those remaining are often "off limits" to snake searchers.


A portrait of a canefield kingsnake.