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I saw 3 snakes down by the lake in May. I believe they are all eastern rat snakes. They are nonvenomous, as are all the snakes in these parts, excepting the copperhead, which I haven't seen around here. They could still give you a bite if you step on or handle them, which I wouldn't presume to do. Poor things were scared enough. I wasn't quite as close as my macro lense makes it look, so if you're a worrier, don't worry.
This young rat snake was a little over a half inch in diameter and 2 to 3 feet long. Ze was stretched across the path between the back parking lots of the fire station and St Hugh's Church, holding still and hoping I would mistake hir for a wavy stick, which I did at first. I love how this snake is stretched out and yet evenly kinked along hir whole length. Such a cute wave. And ze has a lovely oil slick pearlescent sheen in the sun.
Ready for hir close up. It's possible this may be a black racer snake, but I think ze's the rat snake. You can see hir sheen a little better in this pic. I did nudge hir tail before leaving to get hir to move into the brush, as that wasn't a very safe spot for a snake to hang out.
I thought this tiny snake might have been a garter snake, but after looking hir up, I think ze is probably a juvenile eastern rat snake, too. They're brown and blotchy like this when young.
This big rat snake was about 2 inches in diameter and probably a good 4 feet at least when uncoiled. A man pointed hir out to me, and was poking a stick at hir. I was luckily able to convince him to leave the poor critter be.
You can see a little bit of the pearlescent sheen over hir subtle patterning.
This snake was also holding very still hoping we'd forget ze was there. There was plenty of room for hir to slither off further into the underbrush, so this is not a coiled to strike position.
Here's looking at you, kid.
This young rat snake was a little over a half inch in diameter and 2 to 3 feet long. Ze was stretched across the path between the back parking lots of the fire station and St Hugh's Church, holding still and hoping I would mistake hir for a wavy stick, which I did at first. I love how this snake is stretched out and yet evenly kinked along hir whole length. Such a cute wave. And ze has a lovely oil slick pearlescent sheen in the sun.
Ready for hir close up. It's possible this may be a black racer snake, but I think ze's the rat snake. You can see hir sheen a little better in this pic. I did nudge hir tail before leaving to get hir to move into the brush, as that wasn't a very safe spot for a snake to hang out.
I thought this tiny snake might have been a garter snake, but after looking hir up, I think ze is probably a juvenile eastern rat snake, too. They're brown and blotchy like this when young.
This big rat snake was about 2 inches in diameter and probably a good 4 feet at least when uncoiled. A man pointed hir out to me, and was poking a stick at hir. I was luckily able to convince him to leave the poor critter be.
You can see a little bit of the pearlescent sheen over hir subtle patterning.
This snake was also holding very still hoping we'd forget ze was there. There was plenty of room for hir to slither off further into the underbrush, so this is not a coiled to strike position.
Here's looking at you, kid.
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Really nice pictures!
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Thank you! (-:
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I've never seen a wild snake (England only has two varieties).
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I turned to the adult who'd been assigned to walk me to the new classroom (I was in the 2nd grade at the time; the school wasn't so into letting 2nd graders roam the halls solo) and asked whether there was a snake in this new classroom. My regular classroom, you see, did not have a snake.
The adult said that there was, and I promptly asked if I could go back to my normal classroom. I had NO desire to be in a classroom with a snake when there was a perfectly good classroom without a snake. Because, well, snake.
However, over time I got really attached to the corn snake, and that experience gave me a fondness for snakes that I'm not sure I'd have had otherwise. That fondness persisted despite spending a lot of my later childhood camping in a place that had all four varieties of poisonous snakes that the US has and regularly seeing them in places that would likely give the overly litigious society today heart palpitations if people had any idea how proximate the venomous things were to scads of tiny Girl Scouts.
The last time I encountered a snake in the wild, I was mountain biking, and there was a snake stretched across the path I was biking along with some friends. They mocked me for being completely unafraid of the snake (and there are rattlesnakes out here. Going downhill on a bike on a singletrack, I was moving a little too fast to identify the type of snake. Could have been a rattlesnake. Might not have been. No way to tell.) but definitely being far more afraid of the gravelly bit on the other side of the snake.
I looked at them and pointed out that since the snake wasn't coiled, it wasn't a threat, but the gravely bit could certainly make any of us fall off the bikes, but that falling was a definite threat. My friends seemed confused that when finding a snake in the middle of the path while biking downhill at speed, my first thought was to see if it was coiled or not, and I just looked at them like, well, duh. I guess all those year of swimming near cottonmouths and checking any red, black, and yellow snake to see if it matched the rhyme had stuck with me.
At any rate, that's a very long way of saying a big thank you for posting these because I now have a not-so-secret but seldom indulged affection for snakes, and these are positively lovely photos of some. Sure, if you live in places with venomous kinds, you need to be careful, but that doesn't mean you have to be terrified of all snakes. I find their little faces kind of adorable once I got past that initial fear.
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Thanks for sharing your lovely snakes.
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