{"id":13055,"date":"2021-05-05T03:59:23","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T10:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=13055"},"modified":"2021-05-05T03:59:23","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T10:59:23","slug":"snakes-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/05\/05\/snakes-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Snakes Alive!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a kid growing up in rural New Jersey, we convinced ourselves that the local lakes and streams were inhabited by water moccasins.\u00a0 All the books said cottonmouths didn&#8217;t live that far north, but we had seen them (or so we thought).\u00a0 I even caught one in a pond on a fishing lure&#8230;I saw it sitting on a rock, I dangled the lure in front of it, and the snake went for it.\u00a0 That scared the hell out of me:\u00a0 I was the classic case of the dog that finally caught the bus he always chased.\u00a0 What do I do now?\u00a0 I ended up cutting the line to let the snake (and my lure) get away.\u00a0 It was, after all, a water moccasin (or so I thought).<\/p>\n<p>And then, of course, many years later there was that rather unsettling scene in my favorite movie, <em>Lonesome Dove<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AtyGj0cEyoQ\" width=\"644\" height=\"362\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Last week Sue and I were back in Sopranoland for a wedding, and the next day we rode around so I could show her my old haunts.\u00a0 One was the Old Mill in Deans (not to be confused with the Old Mill Hotel in Baja).\u00a0 It was behind where my grandma lived and it was basically a dam that created a huge lake where we used to play back in the day.\u00a0 So we&#8217;re walking around and I snapped a photo or two when this woman said &#8220;there&#8217;s a snake down there!&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_13086\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13086\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13086 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Old-Mill-Panorama-Aligned-900.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Old-Mill-Panorama-Aligned-900.jpg 900w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Old-Mill-Panorama-Aligned-900-300x107.jpg 300w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Old-Mill-Panorama-Aligned-900-768x273.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13086\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A panorama of the lake at the Old Mill&#8230;five photos stitched together in PhotoShop.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I checked and what do you know, she was right.\u00a0 The snake was on a log downstream of the dam where a bridge carried traffic over the spillway.\u00a0 The snake was almost directly beneath the bridge.\u00a0 As usual, I didn&#8217;t have the perfect lens on my Nikon (that would have been the 70-300 Nikkor), but what I had on the camera (Old Faithful, my 24-120 Nikon lens) worked a lot better than a cell phone.\u00a0 I zoomed all the way and grabbed some awesome photos.\u00a0 Then I looked around and I saw another snake on the same log.\u00a0 And then another slithering through the water.\u00a0 And then two more that might have been making even more snakes.\u00a0 Snakes alive, I was in the middle of a moccasin orgy!<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_13061\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13061\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13061 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0007-600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"899\" srcset=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0007-600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0007-600-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13061\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This spot is at least a couple of hundred years ago. There used to be a mill located here, powered by the water held behind this dam. We played here as kids. It was a good time and a good place to grow up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_13063\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13063\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13063 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0009-600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"1350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0009-600.jpg 900w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0009-600-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0009-600-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0009-600-768x1152.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13063\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">And another!. The lower snake is the same one you see in the big photo above. Then I spotted the one you see at the top of this photo!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_13064\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13064\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13064 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0011-900-600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"900\" srcset=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0011-900-600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0011-900-600-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13064\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This guy was next to the log, slithering around in the water.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_13065\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13065\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13065 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0036-900-600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"493\" srcset=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0036-900-600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0036-900-600-300x247.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13065\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">I saw these two looking straight down from my vantage point on the bridge above the stream. I leaned waaaay over the bridge railing to get this shot. Water moccasins making whoopee?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I was so intrigued by the above photos that I Googled &#8220;water moccasin&#8221; to get photos of the real McCoy.\u00a0 After spending decades believing there were indeed moccasins in New Jersey, I convinced myself that what I was seeing in my photos were common New Jersey water snakes.\u00a0 Moccasins have a more triangular head and a slightly different pattern.\u00a0 Still, these snakes are pretty big (the big one on the log in the photo above was about 5 feet long) and I would not want to tangle with any of them.\u00a0 You never know&#8230;I might be wrong and maybe they are moccasins.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Creeped out by this blog, or were you intrigued by it and other similar war stories?\u00a0 Never miss an ExNotes blog:\u00a0 Sign up here for a free subscription!<\/p>\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a kid growing up in rural New Jersey, we convinced ourselves that the local lakes and streams were inhabited by water moccasins.\u00a0 All the books said cottonmouths didn&#8217;t live that far north, but we had seen them (or so we thought).\u00a0 I even caught one in a pond on a fishing lure&#8230;I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/05\/05\/snakes-alive\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Snakes Alive!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[392,96],"tags":[2020,2019,2018,2021],"class_list":["post-13055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-back-in-the-day","category-feel-good-stuff","tag-common-nj-water-snake","tag-cottonmouh-snake","tag-water-moccasins","tag-water-moccasins-in-new-jersey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/20210502_0018-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13055"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13087,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055\/revisions\/13087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}