Yeah, I can understand that. Both the cottonmouth and the harmless water snakes have a very similar stocky body proportion.


When I blew up the photo prior to it becoming too extremely pixelated, it looked to be a harmless Water Snake, but as Larry also mentioned, it's just not close enough to see any real identifying meristic features, so you don't want to assume. If the person would have VERY slowly and carefully walked a good bit closer and took the photo, it definitely would have been close enough for an accurate identification. You could tell her if she sees another snake there next time that it won't chase her down whatsoever if she can slowly get closer as to not spook the snake. I'm sure she was the one that was "spooked" anyway because of the distance..LOL! When moving very, very slowly, snakes can't even tell anything's there. If the snake was spooked, it would have simply crawled off into the water and got further away to a safer distance and resumed thermoregulating.

Anyway, yes, we tried, but nothing more could be said about it other than what we both mentioned. We'll just wish her better luck on the next photo if she get's a chance..

cheers, ~Doug
-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com


"some are just born to troll and roll"

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