A Harmless Northern Water Snake?

September is a nearly perfect month.  Apples are ripening on the trees.  Vegetable gardens are still producing.  There's a hint of fall in the chilly mornings and evenings, but afternoons still feel like August.  Look at the sunlight and clouds dancing over this beautiful field, with its goldenrod in the foreground and a lone oak tree spreading its broad limbs out among the corn.  It was a good day to be off work and free to roam the world.

People often ask me, "Why do you always take a walking stick with you when you hike?"  Here's one good reason: Pharaoh's magicians frequently drop their walking sticks in my path.  (That's an obscure reference to the Book of Exodus--that you may remember from the 1956 classic movie, The Ten Commandments, with Charlton Heston.)  This big fellow was just stretching out in the middle of the road near a pond at Hillman State Park, blocking my way.  He was easily four and a half feet long.  Now, I didn't want to harm the snake, but nor did I feel like stepping over him.  I wasn't sure if he was a poisonous "water moccasin" or a harmless water snake.  I tossed a few pebbles in his direction, hoping to scare him off, but he was imperturbable.  So at last I nudged him with the tip of my walking stick, and he slithered off...silent as death.