Been awhile since we played: can you find the snake?

Dani

Dani

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Out turkey hunting yesterday afternoon. No gobblers wanted to play but I did call a hen in. While I was walking around looking for a place to sit, I found a snake.....can you?

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She's not a little one...but she didn't try to murder me either. In case you can't find her, here's a close up.

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They are really well camouflaged. What stuck out to me when I saw her from about 15 yards away was her coiled up shape (looked like a HUGE poop) and the texture of her scales. It was different from the pine needles and dirt. Shape and texture is what I look for when looking for sharks teeth and it clearly translates well to snakes because this is the third one I have found this year using that skill (the other two were moccasins).

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I left her alone and went to a totally different section of woods to sit. When I walked back to the truck through there on the way back to the truck in the evening, I was extra vigilant. For the first time, I rethought my hip boots I ordered. I ordered just regular ole waterproof hip boots from Dan's Hunting Gear. Perhaps I should have gone with the waterproof hip boot snake chaps.

This was the first snake where I felt like my knee high boots were truly inadequate. She never uncoiled for me so I can't be positive, but I would put her in the 12-15 foot class. I mean, at least for the initial startling HOLY CRAP THAT'S A BIG RATTLESNAKE starting point. She got a little smaller when I got closer after I caught up with my heart that tried to disappear, but she is still easily the biggest one I have ever seen. I kept a good six feet away so she never did more than turn her head to keep an eye on me, but she was impressive.
 
Nice!
Looks like she's hanging out in that old gopher tortoise burrow. Rattle snakes and GTs go hand in hand. Where there is GTs, there is probably rattlesnakes.
 
Glad I did not see this while I was on vacation down on Marathon Key. Now that I am safely returned to Maine, can you tell me whether I needed to be worry about any poisonous snakes down there?

I know Florida does not have sea-snakes, and most of my time was spent in saltwater snorkeling, kayaking, or fishing. But I have to admit that some narrow little creeks through the mangroves we paddled the kayaks had me a little freaked out.

Those mangrove leaves reminded me a lot of the mountain laurel and rhododendron down in the mid-Atlantic, where I once I had a very scary encounter with a snake at eye level in a branch of I grabbed hiking a trail along Slickrock Creek in Tennessee.
It was not poisonous, but still gave me nightmares for weeks. (Best guess was a black rat snake--and a big one!)

The image of a water moccasin dropping into my kayak as I ducked under a fat mangrove branch will not go away. Please tell me I can stop worrying about this.
 
None of our snakes along the gulf coast are poisonous, you can eat as many as you like (but check which ones are protected first before harvesting).

Also, none of our North American venomous snakes are arboreal.
Odds are that any snake you see up in a tree is a non-venomous water snake, which look very similar to water moccasins and are known for climbing trees to bask.
So yes, you can stop worrying about this.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43287367
https://srelherp.uga.edu/snakes/agkpis.htm

And water moccasins generally don't like saltwater (brackish, yes. truly salty like the Keys, not really).
 
Thanks, Carl. I should stop worrying about this--even if moccasins can climb trees, I'm way more likely to drown, be riun over by a drunk power boater, or die of a heart attack than ever have one bite me.

But I can't stop thinking about it.
 
Pit vipers hanging out in trees is one thing I am glad we dont have to worry about!
 
Definitely not normal behavior for rattle snake! I think I heard the person filming stating he "spooked" the snake, so its probably an escape mechanism.
 
You guys are lucky to only have a half a dozen or so venomous snakes there.

We've got aver 150 species of snakes here and nearly half have venom that they spit or bite.

Many folks here are killed by snakes each year, some of them are so deadly that most of the time people die on their way to the hospital. I ran into a monocled cobra one day in the middle of the river. About 1000 ft from shore.

They are great swimmers and can float just like a cork if they want to.

Most of them are not after people thank God.
 
actually I was at a private boat ramp on the intra coastal waterway last year and one of the state conservation police officers (Virginia game wardens) was there watching out for two cotton mouths in a tree overhanging the dock at the boat ramp. First time for me seeing them up a tree. but I have seen plenty of them in and around the waterway.
 
Joe Friday said:
12-15 feet?! Seriously? Clearly, that snake is not an inch over 9 feet!
Click to expand...

I dunno Joe. 12-15 feet might have been an underestimation by the way my heart seemed to have leapt out of my body when I saw it.


While I have not seen rattlers in trees, I have seen moccasins in trees. Almost always overhanging water as I recall.

Todd, I'll keep my half a dozen venomous snakes...you can have your waaaaaaaaay more than that snakes. I don't worry overly much about letting Belle run through the woods but if there were double digit species of venomous snakes out there just waiting to kill my dog (because I know that's what snakes do), then my dog might never step a foot off pavement.
 
I love a good snake story so I must chime in. As a teenager in Southwestern PA we went on a couple rattlesnake hunting expeditions. We only found them when we weren't looking for them, i.e. hiking, etc. We never found any while looking for them even when told by some old-timers where to go in Autumn as the snakes would congregate to den-up. I had a Pentax SLR camera with a self-timer that made a buzzing sound just like the Timber Rattlers we hunted. I had a lot of fun scaring my buddies with that camera. I would hit that Timer just as they were looking under a flat stone or log where we were sure a big rattler was hiding.
I've heard of snake-infested areas but only ever lived in one. It was in Cary NC., a very suburban area...In 20 years or so living there I encountered at least 11 Copperheads including 1 that I stepped on in the dark laying in our street--I must hae stepped on its head because it didn't bite me. Hit one with a lawnmoweri once. Found another one on the concrete floor of my head-high crawlspace workshop. Our English Cocker got bit twice (i.e. 4 fang marks) on his nose by one that we never did find. Dog survived just fine with treatment of Benedryl by vet. Luckily Copperhead bites are rarely fatal to humans and (as I understand) even dogs usually survive, often without any treatment.
SCAREIST snakey place I ever lived was a short 2 years around 1980 in Melbourne FL. Hadn't lived there long when I read in local newspaper that a tourist from Ohio stepped out of her car at beach access in Satellite Beach and got bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake. Welcome to Florida! West Melbourne had a lot of Eastern Diamondbacks at that time...supposedly with heads as big as your fist. They would eat feral piglets and got quite a pot belly until digested fully. A groundskeeper at the plant where I worked got enraged at his supervisor and placed a Diamondback in the supervisor's car--snake crawled under a seat and guy didn't discover it until he was driving home. Wildcat Bait and Tackle shop in Melbourne Beach had a big Diamondback skin on their wall. All these things were enough to keep me out of the woods and focused on saltwater fishing for those 2 years! I wouldn't be as "skeered" now though...especially with Snake Boots.
Apparently Diamondbacks aren't protected in FL as they are in other states now (EX: NC--although a big one was killed not long ago at Camp LeJeune --not far from Croatan Nat Forest one of my favorite places). From imagineourflorida.org: The largest recorded eastern Diamondback was 96 inches (8 feet!) in length. Today, however, you would be considered lucky to see one as large as 6 feet long.
Dani, you were wise to give that snake a wide berth. I've read where an Eastern Diamondback bite (if not "Dry") mid-calf has killed people before they could reach help.
 
Here in Virginia the cane break rattlesnake is protected. they are not too aggressive but will bite if surprised. There is a wildlife management area that was the last area of public land that held a very good population. of bobwhite quail the state changed the environment to favor the snake and wiped out the quail. This area is next to the Great Dismal Swamp thousands of acres of perfect snake habitat.
 
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