Snakes! Yipes!

Yesterday afternoon on our walk down our country road, Diamond and I happened upon a snake in the middle of the road. Being curious by nature, both of us moseyed over toward the thing to check it for vital signs. It looked as if it was dead, but one can never be too sure when dealing with snakes.

Sure enough it was dead, but even in that condition, it was creepy. It was about three feet long and what I’d call skinny. Probably not full grown yet, I surmised. Diamond sniffed it, and I nudged it with the toe of my sneaker. I looked a little more closely to see if it had the diamond-shaped head of a poisonous snake, but whatever had run it over did a number on the creature’s head. I also noted the pattern on its body. It was a light brown snake, with a darker brown geometric pattern running down its body. It didn’t look like what I remembered a rattlesnake to look like from the skin of one that hung in my brother’s bedroom for years when I was a little girl. But just to be on the safe side, I checked out the end of its tail for evidence of any rattles. None there – not a rattlesnake.

Diamond and I left the creature in the road where we found it and continued our walk. I began thinking about this summer and the many times I was deep in brambles and weeds searching for wild plums and blackberries. Phil always warned me about snakes, but I wasn’t overly concerned. I believed that between Diamond racing through the brush and all the noise I made kicking at briars and brambles, any smart snake would run (or slither) for safety from us. Thinking about this dead one in the middle of my road made me consider the danger I could have been in all summer long. I didn’t know if this snake was poisonous or not, but if it had been, I could very easily have crossed its path on either side of the road on a multitude of occasions. And I was sure that it probably had brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles slithering all over the place near my house. I was very happy thinking about the automobile that stopped its forward progress.

After we got home, I did an internet search for brown snakes in Georgia. From the photos on one of the official snake websites of Georgia, I determined that this snake could have been a copperhead or a mole king snake. I need to go back and look more closely at its pattern, because from the photos on the website, these two snakes have similar markings.

Whatever it was, it woke me up to being more careful and observant when I am out in the woods and brush. We have snakes!