Herpetofauna: One Life's List

Nerodia sipedon sipedon
Northern Water Snake

New Florence, Missouri.
Spring 1974

My first water snake, found along a gravelly farm creek in Missouri. These snakes are wicked biters, as I was to find out personally; they seem to bite and hang on,  leaving numbers of teeth in your skin to be pulled out later with tweezers.  In high school my friends and I  visited a certain creek in St. Louis county where these snakes were plentiful, and beautiful.  They preferred to hide out in logjams, where leaves, branches and other detritus would mass together.   Occasionally we would find them under large flat rocks or debris along the bank, especially the juveniles.

The snake at left is a specimen from eastern Nebraska.