I practically stepped on this....

Before I realized what it was. I was tracking three boys and SGG at the edge of the woods when my peripheral vision caught something unusual just below my foot and I extended my stride just a hair.

Cottonmouth, Water Moccasin, whatever you want to call them, it is a poisonous snake. There are more pictures, and a video below. It is near the end of October and these guys are normally near dormant this time of year, but it is a warm 80+ degree day here today. It wasn't very interested in me, and it wasn't able to move very fast. I got the boys and SGG over to have a look, from a safe distance, and we let the snake keep going on it's way. It seems like I see one every October.

We were out doing a geocache and moving a travel bug along. I've been wanting to get to this cache for a while. It is in a park I know very well, but a section I've never really been to before. SGG and I took my son and two of my neighbor's boys. It was fun, but we were under a time constraint....which we kind of busted. The cache was very cool, but fairly difficult to get to since there are no real "trails" leading there. There were a lot of thorns and my calves are scratched up pretty good.

It has been two years since the last big acorn harvest, but they are falling like rain drops here now. All day and all night...***SMACK***thud***thud***thud***roll***roll***swish. They hit the roof, bounce, roll, and sail into the grass or drive way. I park the car away from the house to keep the acorns from collecting under the windshield wipers.

:-)

EDITED to add:
SGG and I now believe this is a copperhead. It would be the biggest one I've seen up close if it is. The head shape, color, and body markings are closer to a copperhead than a water moccasin. If you look at pictures of both, you can begin to see why they are hard to tell apart.

Cool Snake and Cache Photos
Slideshow
And here are the pictures in a slide show below (just smaller):