Ophidiophobia

This past weekend we got together at Wildcat Den State park in Iowa with family to take pictures. It was all going as smoothly as it can go with 8 little kids when the photographer began screaming… I mean the kind of screaming that sounds like it is part of a Freddy Kruger movie. It took only a second to realize what had her disturbed was not Hadley or Jilly tossing a very expensive camera into the water. It was indeed worse. It was a rather large, confident looking snake that was heading down the stairs that we all had just ambled up, 8 young kids in tow. There were only a few left below, and let me say Thank You God! I was not one of them.

Growing up in southeast Iowa, under the entertainment, and often the supervision of two older brothers, I saw many, many garter snakes. I knew that they had no real teeth, no venom, and while I still had the same queasy feeling that many women since Eve experience when seeing a snake, I was never totally afraid of them.

Moving to Arizona, the idea of the Rattlesnake was enough to make me think and rethink our prospective move. I am glad that I did no real research into just how common and frequent my encounters would have been, or Kevin and I may have spent 10 years in Kansas instead of the Valley of the Sun…From sightings on the hiking trails, to the dead one I saw from our friends’ freezer, I never got over the uneasy feeling that I would have a moment in life that I would have to really deal with a snake. It was not one of the reasons we moved, however, it did cross my mind shortly after leaving that it was one less thing to worry about.

So when I asked, “what kind of snake was that?” and was told it was a cottonmouth/water moccasin, I had a rough couple of days. All the “what ifs” that went through my mind were disturbing. After all, while she has never seemed particularly afraid of snakes, my own mother is the world champion of “worst case scenario” in many, many other fields. Today I had enough. I decided that I needed to look up what actually would have happened had this horrible, poisonous, deadly serpant had indeed attacked one of my babies. Guess what I uncovered?
Anyone a snake expert? If you are, you are shaking your head by now. You realize what none of us did. Cottonmouth snakes, and/or water moccasins do not live in Iowa. ( I swear, my whole childhood, I heard they were in every body of water I swam in that did not contain chlorine—let’s face it, I told you that I have 2 older brothers, they probably had me thinking they might be in a few pools) Water snakes that are not poisonous, and look a lot like them do, but actual real live water moccasins do not, at least according to University of Iowa, Iowa State, and the Iowa Department of Conservation. I have spent the whole week worrying about a snake that does not live north of Virginia. There were a couple of reported cases/sightings of them in Iowa, but very few had any real credibility, more like “I swear it was one cause uncle Doug told me” or “I don’t care what wildlife experts claim, my brother was bit by one, that’s why his whole hand swelled up, not because he stabbed with his pencil”

Instead here is a sampling of what I found.
Northern water snakes are by far the most abundant of the three water snake species in Iowa, and also one of the most common large snakes in general. It is often seen by fishermen, who may mistake them for the venomous cottonmouth, which is not found in Iowa.

The true water moccasin (Agkistrodon piscivorous) is an animal of the lower Mississippi River valley and the southeastern U.S. The farthest north it gets is the southeastern corner of Virginia, and it is not common there.

The general range of cottonmouths, a highly poisonous pit viper, is south of a line running through far southern Missouri and Illinois. Iowa Herpetology says, "The famous, and venomous, cottonmouth (or water moccasin), Agkistrodon piscivorus, is not found in Iowa. The farthest north cottonmouths have been recorded is central Missouri." People do tend to refer to all water snakes as water moccasins, so we wouldn't be surprised if people said they were present in the Quad-Cities area. We would be very surprised if they actually were.

Water snakes, garter
snakes, and bull snakes are also common. These
snakes will all occasionally take a dip, but the
water snake is the most common swimming snake.
Water moccasins, also called cottonmouths, do not
live in Iowa's wetlands.


In other words the odds that the snake we happened to see that had my heart racing all week was a wayward real cottonmouth, is about the same as me holding the winning powerball ticket, not impossible, but also not bloody likely….