Pierson, Kenny, and I had been out on Florida's western panhandle searching for brook, dusky, and dwarf salamanders. We had done okay and were now working our way back eastward stopping here and there to roll logs and dip our nets in whatever water was available.

We spent a lot of time sorting through aquatic vegetation, finding the tadpoles of various frogs, a few siren and amphiuma, a glossy crayfish snake or two, and in one net-full of vegetation, a neonate cottonmouth.



The finding of a cottonmouth in Florida is seldom worthy of comment for, although many snake species are somewhat harder to find than they once were, cottonmouths remain abundant.

When neonates, most are quite brilliantly colored in oranges, tans, and browns. But this baby, an intergrade between the eastern cottonmouth, Agkistrodon p. piscivorous, and the Florida subspecies, A. p. conanti, was clad in oranges that at some places bordered on red, bright tans, and deep browns, and was much prettier than most neonate cottonmouths.

In fact, I have not yet seen another that equals it.