Tell me if you've heard this story before. There is one really good herping spot in the county that provides most of my sightings for the year. Massive drainage area with waterfalls, wooded islands, rocky impoundments, trails along the stream. Last year I noticed a lot of the Nerodia were missing from their usual basking spots, hoping it wasn't me that scared em off. This year where there should be 25 I've seen just 7 or 8, and it's the big females that are absent. The loss of this site makes my Nerodia count for the year (and for snakes in general) nonexistent. Then an employee of the water treatment plant told me of their long history of killing snakes on sight, and the great abundance of sightings in the past few weeks. He described perhaps a dozen encounters with black rats, racers and large water snakes, the most recent of which was chopped while trying to eat a catfish. Sound familiar?

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