Snake

On our walk around Anson Nixon Park today, the Cranky Friend and I were bickering as is our wont when suddenly, on the edge of the woods near Walnut Road, I spotted a large snake beside the path. This was not one of those cute little garter snakes that I've been known to pick up and coo over. No. This guy had a thick body, bold markings and a mean-looking cocked head.
In an embarrassing show of cowardice I immediately clutched the CF's arm, hard, and cowered behind him. In contrast, he calmly assessed the creature's markings, estimated its length (about two feet) using his forearm as a guide, and snapped a few photos. The snake stayed still except when the CF got too close, at which point he moved his head in warning.
Our first guess, based on the colors and head shape, was that it was a poisonous copperhead, which considerably amped up the excitement level of our walk. As soon as we reached the Internet we Googled images of copperheads and held up the digital images for comparison.
Well, the markings were similar, but no matter how hard we tried -- and we really tried -- we just couldn't get them to match. Our guy's head was just not distinct enough from its body.
The PA Herp Identification website suggested checking out the Eastern Milk Snake and the Northern Water Snake. The latter, to our extreme disappointment, turned out to be an excellent match for our guy.
A harmless Northern Water Snake when you thought you'd had an encounter with a venomous reptile. Talk about a comedown.
The next morning I went out for a bird walk with an extremely nature-savvy young woman and started to tell her about the snake sighting.
"Let me guess," she said. "It was a Northern Water Snake."
Kindly, she added that they really do resemble copperheads.
(By the way, the Herp site has a popup ad for a site where you can check your arrest record. Do they think people accidentally typed in "herp" when they meant "perp"?)