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By Patti Smith
While many markets have been on the decline over the last decade, the demand for snakeskin apparel and accessories has been on the rise. Florida Everglades snake hunters are approached regularly from overseas markets seeking the exotic skins. They are sold to high end designers who turn them into their own unique collections.
A genuine python skin, cotton-lined handbag adorned with gold hardware and fine leather fringe, for example, is made in Italy by Gucci and retails for $5,500. The complementary wallet sells separately for $930.
Python is popular because of the reptile’s beautiful markings and colors. A report on Florida craftsmen printed in Fort Lauderdale’s Sun-Sentinel revealed the growing population of Burmese pythons in South Florida’s Everglades over the last decade. Craftsmen have been trapping these invasive reptiles, which are native to Southeast Asia and have been released into the wild by pet owners or have escaped their enclosures.
In Florida’s Panhandle, craftsmen like Wanda Giles work with various snakeskins. Rattlesnake and boa constrictors make up the majority of the area’s available snakeskin.
Most people will pass right on by when they see a dead snake in the road. If they’re a friend of Wanda’s, however, they will pull over, search their car for something to put it in and carefully collect the specimen.
“It’s amazing that people who normally would be grossed out will pick them up and bring them to me,” she said.
They’ll take it to her home in Southport where she will add it to her freezer that already holds several frozen snakes, including two rattlers, a small glass snake and her former pet, a red-tailed boa
named Ruby.
Giles, who teaches elementary school in Bay County, always has been fascinated with snakes. Although her husband, Tony, does not share her affection for the reptiles, he did buy Ruby, the first pet snake she ever owned, as a Christmas present.
“He came in with a pillowcase, dropped it in front of me and said, ‘Here,’” Wanda said. The skins of the snakes are so beautiful that Wanda can’t bear to see them waste away in the road or rot away in a grave. She tells her friends that have pet snakes to pass them on to her when they die.
But she doesn’t collect for collection’s sake. She is a craftsman who turns the brilliant skins into accessories.
“I don’t keep anything. Everything I make I give away,” said Wanda. One of her first projects was a belt for Tony that she made out of the black and honey golden skin of a female diamond back rattle snake. The dark spots on the female are almost heart shaped.
Treating the snake skin to get it ready for use is a month-long process. She starts by skinning a thawed snake and soaking the skin in a five gallon bucket of tanning solution.
“It’s as thin and soft as really expensive silk,” she said. “I was so amazed at how soft it was and how thin and pliable and flexible it was.”
Wanda always wears gloves when she is skinning rattlers. Their venom sacks, located at the top of the jaw, can be deadly if punctured accidentally and absorbed through the skin.
“I always wear gloves,” she said. “Their venom can st ill get you even if they are dead.”
Wanda’s sense of craftiness is inspired by her long line of full-blooded Native American relatives. Wanda is 1/8 Cherokee and 1/8 Apache. Apaches are known for crafting ornate pottery, and Cherokees are known for beaded jewelry, basket-making and wood carving. She grew up hearing stories from her great-grandparents about the things they would make. Wanda’s father is a woodworker who even rubbed off on Tony, who is responsible for a beautiful breadbox set on the couple’s kitchen countertop.
“There is so much we have lost because of technology, and we don’t have the time,” said Wanda, who acknowledged that it is easier to pick up a decorative item from a department or craft store rather than make it ourselves. But there’s something about making it herself that is meaningful and special to Wanda, who has become a collector of antique craft books as well. She picks them up at estate sales and yard sales. To her they are treasures from the past.
Besides working the snake skins, she crochets and knits and also has crafted a small purse from a piece of hide. The only thing she wants to learn how to do is spin wool, but, sadly, she is allergic.
She doesn’t like to see things go to waste, and it bothers her that there are boas out there wandering through the woods because their owners have illegally disposed of them—basically turned them out to fend for themselves.
“They get too big and become invasive, then we find snakes like boas that are not indigenous,” she said. The proper way to dispose of an unwanted snake is to call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Service.
By age 3, Ruby got too big for Wanda to have around her small nieces and nephews who spent a lot of time around Wanda’s house, so she made arrangements for another family to parent her on the condition that if or when she died, Ruby would be returned to Wanda.
Wanda’s next project to tackle will be covering a pair of shoes with one of her snake’s skins—possibly Ruby’s. She will take Ruby’s bones and preserve them in their skeletal form for her students at Lucille Moore Elementary School to enjoy.
“I just love them,” Wanda said of her snakes. “I think they are beautiful.”
