SAN ANGELO STANDARD TIMES (Texas) 18 September 05 Cottonmouth snakes not so soft (Dr. Terry Maxwell is a professor of biology at Angelo State University)
As if having one's home flooded and being evacuated for an uncertainly long period were not enough, New Orleans' hurricane victims have had the mental trauma of worrying about poisonous snakes. It's one thing to voluntarily walk into a viper's native habitat; it's another to have it swim into your living room.
Most of the fear I've seen expressed in news releases concerns what many call ''water moccasins'' but what reptile specialists - herpetologists - call ''cottonmouths.'' I would be surprised if within that mix of now-displaced urban serpents there were not also a few canebrake rattlesnakes, copperheads and coral snakes. It's certainly enough to keep most folks downing tranquilizers.
Cottonmouth water moccasins are legendary reptiles of peculiar interest to those of us here in the Concho River drainage basin, and in light of all the current Gulf Coast miseries, surely a timely wildlife topic. I have no extensive personal knowledge of this snake, but John Werler (recently deceased) and Jim Dixon do.
Werler was long a curator at the Houston Zoological Gardens, and Dixon is a renowned herpetologist recently retired from the wildlife department at Texas A&M University. Together they authored ''Texas Snakes,'' published by the University of Texas Press - a publication that provided most of what I present here.
The cottonmouth is closely related to the copperhead. Both are pit vipers, as are rattlesnakes. But cottonmouths and copperheads lack the rattles on the end of the tail. As pit vipers, they have on each side of the head, between the eye and nostril, a facial pit sensitive to infrared - heat. That pit allows them to effectively hunt warm-blooded prey in the dark when eyesight is poor, although cottonmouths feed mostly on fish, amphibians and other reptiles.
Adult cottonmouths typically are uniformly dark. There's not much obvious patterning. Younger ones exhibit broad crossbands of darker color than the background color of the snake. Newborns look nearly identical to young copperheads with conspicuous crossbands and a yellow-tipped tail.
People who claim that every snake they see in the water is a cottonmouth are mistaken. A fairly large group of harmless water snakes should not be confused with this viper. A cottonmouth swims with most of its body visible above the water line and its head totally clear of the water, whereas a water snake swims with its body submerged and its head hardly out of the water.
If you encounter one of these vipers, its likely to open its mouth widely and give you a good view of that famous cotton-white mouth lining.
That's a threat posture that most sensible people heed. If you keep pestering it, it's likely to strike.
The most recent detailed study in Texas recorded that only 7 percent of hospitalizations for venomous snake bites involved cottonmouths despite this species' local abundance in much of southeastern Texas. A much higher percentage of venomous snake bites in Texas are caused by rattlesnakes.
Records also indicate that few humans die from cottonmouth bite. Werler and Dixon claim that barely ''one human fatality a year can be attributed to this species nationwide.'' All that understood, I still don't care to get bitten by one, and living in the Concho Valley provides some opportunity for that to happen.
The most western occupation of North America by cottonmouth is in the Concho River system. They occur here west to Spring Creek in Irion County. I have seen them on occasion along South Concho River banks, and their use of Lake Nasworthy is well known. Their presence here is a point of interest for naturalists, but one perhaps not so enthusiastically touted by local promoters.
It is unlikely that cottonmouths and other venomous snakes are going to be a serious problem in flooded New Orleans. Reality is nearly always less than what we can imagine. Then again, I don't have to worry about the possibility of any animal swimming into my living room.
Cottonmouth snakes not so soft

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