There weren't supposed to be any water moccasin in East Tennessee. Supposedly, the winters were too cold here for them to survive. Timber rattlers and copperheads abound in this area, especially where the ridges are undisturbed. We were told not to worry because there were no cottonmouths this far north. Not so. Let me tell you about it.

There was this time in the early nineties when Jerry Love, across the way in the big house, was preparing for his three children to come to Tennessee from Minnesota to spend the summer with him. For a treat, he ordered a dump truck load of white river sand from the Tennessee River near Chattanooga to make a beach on the pond in front of his house on Summers Road. It seemed like a good idea.

The kids came to Tennessee; the white sand slowly made its way into the pond. The summer passed. No beach remained. Jerry's kids went back to Minnesota. It wasn't until the next spring until we started seeing snakes other than our usual black snakes, copperheads and rattlers. I don't know why we didn't see them sooner. I had assumed cottonmouths laid eggs and some had made their way to Jerry's pond in the truck load of river sand. In researching this story, I learned that live birth is the norm.

In that case, why didn't we see them sooner? The snakes we encountered the next spring were about three feet long with stout, powerful bodies. Their ground color was grey, meaning they were young snakes. The book says their heads are noticeably larger than the neck and triangular in shape. I wouldn't know about that. When I saw the head, the mouth was wide open and threatening.

My encounter happened one evening the following spring. Because of other venomous snakes in our area, we never walk outside after dark without a flashlight. I had been over to Anne's house and was walking back home. Pug had laid a boardwalk out to the satellite dish in the front yard. Our dogs Stanley and Buster were with me. As I came to Mandy's Patio, I saw a snake on the boardwalk out near the satellite dish, weaving right and left as it hunted for prey.

Instantly it was back, right in front of me, mouth open wide and ready for battle. The two dogs backed up and fled the area. I started screaming my usual scream: "SNAKE!" Anne heard me and came running with her .22 rifle. The snake held its ground on the boardwalk. Anne shot it in the neck just below its mouth. A trickle of blood ran down its front. All the snake did was flinch. Anne yelled for Pug to throw her the shotgun. He did. She shot it at point blank range, blowing its head to kingdom come. We looked but never did find it. The body was thrown down the bank across the road. That was not to be the end of our encounters with cottonmouths.

I remember the time we watched the garbage man beating the ground to death with a two by four around the garbage cans in Jerry Love's driveway. We yelled over, asking what he was doing. "Killing a snake!" he responded. When he picked up the garbage can, there was a cottonmouth under it. That was when Pug built a rack for our cans so there would be no surprises there.
Another time Pug picked up a piece of vinyl siding laying on the ground next to Anne's house. We had been applying new siding to her house. There it was, another cottonmouth. Pug killed it.

We still had our fish pond at that time. It was stocked with goldfish. They started disappearing. I assumed the pesty raccoons were fishing in my pond again. We soon saw the culprits. A cottonmouth slowly rose to the surface of the water from the bottom muck. It must have thought the hunting was better in my small pond rather than over in Jerry's big one. Anne killed several that summer.
I have told several locals about our encounters with cottonmouths. They all laugh and tell me that I am mistaken. We know what we killed. Cottonmouths are here. Yes, they found a shark in Norris Lake. It was planted there. I laughed about the shark, but cottonmouths live here. Water moccasins are here.