I posted this about an hour ago but I can't find the posting. I live in the Northern Neck of Virginia a few miles away from the Rappahannock River. There is a very small pond two blocks away with woods right behind our patio. We were eating dinner on the patio when we noticed a gray-brown snake with thin cream-colored lines (our friend thought they were light green lines) across its body and going down along the underbelly making the gray appear like large blocks. It was about two to two and a half feet long and maybe an inch or two wide. A friend looked at a picture I have and thought it was a cottonmouth but I thought maybe it was a water snake of some kind. I was not able to find anything like it on the internet. I did not know how to post the picture since I am new to this.
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Water snake or cottonmouth?
Replies (6)
You can post a picture here if it is hosted online somewhere. You would upload it to a photo host (like Flickr, Photobucket, etc) or the Kingsnake.com gallery.
Then link the URL for the photo in the Image URL box below the reply box.
As for your snake, Cottonmouths don't make it that far north in VA. They stop south of you, so your snake was definitely not a cottonmouth.
Here's a range map showing the known historical range of the Cottonmouth in VA.
There are a lot o urban legends about them occurring further north (even into New England) but those are just urban legends.
Cottonmouth Range in Virginia
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas
Snakes of Virginia. http://www.virginiaherpetologicalsociety.com/reptiles/snakes/snakes_of_virginia.htm
I was finally able to figure out how to download my snake picture. So here it is! I found a picture of a king snake that was very similar to my snake only mine looked gray-brown rather than black.
Eastern Kingsnake
Eastern Kingsnake
So is my snake a king snake?
I'm from Va as well and lived in Kilmarnock for a bit. My family still us out in Whitestone and irvington. That pic is def eastern king. Cotton mouths don't range up into the NN. The furthest north and west they appear in VA is New Port News Va with an isolated population around Petersburg if they still exist there.
I'm headed back to the NN a few times this month and would love to see where you saw him.
