An Eastern Hognose in a defense display.
A Western Hognose snake, not quite coiled up, but probably pretty alert.
My inspiration for sharing these two today really is in thanks to mk, who posted a snake in this very thoughtful and well written but not snake oriented thread and katakowsj, who asked what kind of snake it was, prompting me to guess, very wrongly I might add. Though in my defense I very much admitted I was guestimating and was in no way certain and was really hedging my bets. So . . . there.
Here's hoping you're all having a beautiful weekend.
A funny, slightly related note is that you could not overestimate how much time I have spent on the Virginia Herpetological Society website since, I shit you not, the first summer I started visiting here. There was a full read-through of snake and turtles earlier this year. There's a LOT of water down here and in DE, we don't have copperheads!! This is an important website!
I don't know if you know, but this site has frog calls, _refugee_. Frog calls. They're delightful. You can't listen to a chorus of The Eastern Spadefood or The Eastern Narrow Mouthed Toad and not feel a little bit tickled. It's impossible.