Talking to snakes

http://www.youtube.com/user/eagledove9

I'm in the process of struggling to upload a few videos of Northern Water Snakes. I've never used YouTube before, so I'm still troubleshooting the technical problems. The videos are unedited and messy, and you get to see a lot of camera shaking as I run from place to place, and zoom in and out. I had to go someplace else to upload them, since I have dialup and it's really slow. They're not really labeled or titled yet either.

I didn't know for sure what kind of snakes they were, and at first thought they might be copperheads, because they have a superficial resemblance to them. But I looked them up, and they match the pictures of Northern Water Snakes. Those are non-poisonous, but their saliva contains an anticoagulant (if I recall) so you'll keep bleeding if you get bitten.

They live in the Fish and Boat Commission ponds. If you are on Route 220 going through State College, it's the Shiloh Road exit, where you get off to go to the Nittany Mall. Instead of going towards Sheetz and the mall, you go the opposite direction, out to the very end of the little road. You'll probably see some fishermen hanging around down there.

There's a path and a fenced area, and you can just walk along the path, and see some machinery and streams and stuff. It's a trout hatchery, I think, and you can see them down in the streams. Go past that to the ponds. There were quite a few snakes in there. I saw about six or seven. They were there last summer, too, so it seems to be their permanent home.

I was talking to the snake, and it actually started coming towards me. I got a little scared and backed off. Maybe someday I'll do another video where I let the snake get closer to the camera. Or I'll learn how to pick them up or something.