Hello everyone,



This is my first time to these forums and I was wondering if you could help me out. I live near Orlando, Florida (in between Orlando and Titusville) on a little over an acre of property. There is swamp and pine scrub all around us and I'm used to dealing with snakes both in and around my home. With the exception of a lone cottonmouth that wandered into our pond, every snake we've dealt with has been non-venomous (and for that I'm thankful). My husband and I are very careful to examine most snakes we find (since most of them seem to be of the ringneck, garter or racer variety) and we've only had to kill that one nasty little cottonmouth, until today.



I opened my garage door and put my toddler into his car seat. As I'm coming around the back of the car, I notice something small coiled behind it -- a snake. It kind of freaked me out because it was in my garage anyway, but its behavior really scared me. It was about a foot to 1.5 ft in length with a white underbelly and a grayish body with reddish-brown blotches (edged by black). It shook its' tail and reared up at me, hissing the whole time. I was going to try and throw a bucket on it, but it lunged at me. I've never seen a non-venomous snake react so violently and stubbornly before. It absolutely refused to budge, just curled up and hissed at me. I didn't hear any rattle. I'm not the best to judge by the head and I certainly wasn't getting close enough to look in its eyes, so the behavior was enough to prompt me to kill it. I feel bad about having to do it, especially if I misidentified it... but I can't seem to find out what it is. Corn Snakes seem to be much redder in color and Mole Kingsnakes seem to be much too rare, so I was wondering if anyone here could offer assistance.



So, just a few more things... It didn't flatten itself up or try to make itself appear to be a cobra... it did raise itself off the floor from its curled position. It was never cornered (actually I was kind of hoping it would just run off into the grass), but no matter how close I came to smacking it with the shovel it didn't budge.



Hopefully this is enough, thanks for all the help!!!



Jen



This is a picture of the back:





Here's a close-up of its head and back:





Here's a good shot of the snake (not the whole thing), complete with full head shot:





Here's a picture of the underbelly:

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