Now, THAT Is A Water Moccasin.

Warning:
At the bottom of this post is a video that you may not enjoy if you are not crazy about seeing poisonous snakes up close and personal.


I brake for snakes.



Now, that is a big water moccasin ... aka, "cottonmouth".

(Tripod & camera self-timer shot, shutterbugs. Always have your tripod with you!)


As I found her ... with her head in a pretty normal position.


Now she's going defensive. By raising her head, she's perhaps warning you, but I think mainly it increases her field of vision, so she can react to any perceived threat ...
... like me.

Only, I was friend, not foe.

Try explaining that to a deaf, angry, poisonous serpent.

(Did J. K. Rowling not realize snakes are deaf when she came up with that whole parceltongue snake speak thang?)

Now, she is really, really ticked off, but it gives us a chance to see why she's called a "cottonmouth".

If you look closely, you can see one fang pretty clearly.

I imagine this is the last view of many a fish and frog.

This is the way I left her. She's off the roadway and in the roadside grass next to a cozy brushy field.

She's not happy with me, but she's not run over and dead either.


I realize that after I left, she may have slid right back out there to bask on the gravel road, but my little moccasin slide attempt may have saved her for this day. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, with the sun low in the sky, perhaps no one would even have come by.


When I first encountered her, I was hoping she would scootch off on her own after a few shots, but she was absolutely not going anywhere, whether it was brazen confidence or slothful roadwarmth basking, she showed no signs of moving anywhere.

Yes, I messed with her ... read the banner mission statement at the top of this blog.

I'm hands on.

Well, in this case, hands on my extended tripodleg snake rescue device and my camera, not hands on the very poisonous, very irritated moccasin.

Although the camera angle and the video may not make this clear, I did keep just out of the strike zone and never, ever, never took my eye off her head even while filming ... you saw me jump, even though I was out of reach.



I like to call it "calculated risk" not "being crazy"... unlike my wife and certain friends.


MY ADVICE TO YOU:

DON'T DO DIS.

STAY AWAY FROM POISONOUS SNAKES.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER.



And give a snake a brake.