OMG OMG OMG......

I sure want to THANK YOU there, Leafwatcher....It is a very real looking reptile.....but don't think it is a water moccasin, which has a spade head and venom pits.....you can keep him yourself, Lance.

Did your visitor break any hosta leaves today?

no broken leaves, its just a photoshop... :P

Thankfully there are no poisonous snakes here.. Rumors of Rattlers in the lower state.. and maybe some over by the Mississippi or Missouri rivers?

The mental image of a serpent, when I see your name, Mocc, is much more flattering than at first, when I had an image of a comfortable leather shoe to go with your username. I'm now embarrassed to say that was my first impression 2 years ago. The snake makes a lot more sense LOL

Don B.

Well, Don, I guess thank you? hehehehe

Like olives, I had to acquire a taste for serpents. Or snakes. I mean, they were everywhere down in Louisiana AND south Texas where I worked. We had to watch out everywhere we tied up the boat, especially if under trees overhanging the bayou banks. I'll never forget the day I observed a tug boat crew with 4x4 long timbers stepping lively and beating the dickens out of something I could not see. It turned out to be a big rattler that was trying to go down an air vent into a compartment below. Cottonmouth moccasins open up and reveal how they got their name....totally white like a boll of cotton.....and the moccasin just as soon chase you as leave you alone. Not a peaceable critter at all.

Do you remember the movie/book by Larry McMurtry LONESOME DOVE? The young cowboy falls off his horse in the stream, and by the time they get him out of the water he is already past saving? Yep, moccasins. Even the baby ones have enough venom to kill a man....or so I was told. And years ago, a young man (I knew his family) was water skiing on the river in springtime. He fell off and the same sort of thing happened to him as in McMurtry's book.

But in naming my home MoccasinLanding, it was more the fear factor I called into play. There is a certain uneasy feeling comes upon one who anticipates encountering such an aggressive critter. And that kept people away from my uninhabited home for almost 20 years. That and the 6 foot long flattened snake I mounted on a board and hung from a tree by my dock. hehehehe. It was Louisiana roadkill flattened by an 18 wheeler. I made no claim that the snake was from MY yard!

I live peaceably with snakes here, they are part of the ecosystem. At our river property, I see them regularly, not sure they are venomous or not. Not a problem, I simply watch where I step and make some noise and stay out of the muck. They like fish and frogs for dinner.