Last night, we took a late night adventure to check.
With things warming up, we were not sure if the Water Moccasins had made it out yet. It wasn't the warmest night, but we figured that it would be worth the peek. It's been a while since we saw a venomous snake in the wild, so we went looking! Here are some of the creatures that we encountered during our journey.
WHO'S OUT AT THE LAKE LATE AT NIGHT?
The first creature that we noticed last night in the water was some rather large tadpoles. Most likely, in my opinion, these may be from last year. Either way, I'm pretty sure that they are Bullfrog tadpoles.
Here is a photo from last night of Red Pepper with an actual Bullfrog. As you can tell, they frogs get rather large, and have even been witnessed eating snakes, birds, and baby turtles.
Based on the size of the tadpoles, I'm guessing that these will be turning into Bullfrogs one day. Well, if they don't get eaten first. Herons, large fish, snakes and turtles all will make these their dinner if they get the opportunity.
We also saw a few crayfish. We really like to check them out, since they are pretty much miniature freshwater lobsters. Also, they are part of the "clean up crew" and eat dead things in the water, like this one is doing.
If you can see the fish in this photo, you should know that there are a lot more where it came from. Plenty of suckers were in the stream leading to the creek.
Here is another photo where you can see many more of them. I may have to try to get some of those to eat soon, but so far I haven't tried. One of my aunts like to pickle them, and I've been waiting to try that. Anyway, as interesting and exciting as those creatures may have been, they were not exactly what we were looking for.
FINALLY, SOME SNAKES!
Since we were not seeing any snakes at all in the water, I began to look under some rocks. Sure enough, I had soon found a snake. This one happened to be a Northern Water Snake though.
While they are cool, and they certainly are snakes, they are definitely not Water Moccasins and they are also not venomous. While they may not have venom, they do like to bite, but I handled them in such a way that they did not even bite me.
I say "they" because I soon found another one, but this one was the same species. Personally, I like seeing these snakes around and find them very beautiful to behold. This is a common species that we also enjoyed back up in Wisconsin.
Again, we had found more snakes this year, but so far no venomous ones and we did not see any Water Moccasins. Soon I hope that they will be out, and I even plan on trying to go swimming with some one night. However, to try such a thing, I'll have to find them first.
So, what's your favorite species of snake? Are the venomous snakes out by you yet? Personally, I think that they are out already, I probably just didn't find any yet.
As always, I'm 
and here's the proof:
proof-of-some-other-snakes
