Lunch Time Herpin' and Rescue

So I was eating lunch when I go ta call that there is a snake in the pond outside of our building. I went there and just for the heck of it I grabbed it, only to find out that it had nylon netting wrapped around it's body and was cutting into his flesh. I quickly cut the nylon, took some pics answered some questions from those curious to see what was going on, and release it back into our pond.

Here are the pics:

Is that a fish hook in the first close up?

zues wrote:

Is that a fish hook in the first close up?

No it's a piece of plastic netting.

zues wrote:

Is that a fish hook in the first close up?

Thats what I thought at first.

Me two

This guy is lucky you decided to grab him. That situation was only going to get worse.

Good save.

Can you convince your employer to stop using plastic mesh?

Me three

horrible to see situations like that

Glad you were there to save and teach.

jw wrote:

Good save.

Can you convince your employer to stop using plastic mesh?

Yes, I think this was a remnant and actually, I'm not even sure he got this on our property. But I'm going to be mentioning this to our facilities. It was completely by chance that I decided to go after this guy. Good thing I did. Luckily water snakes are very resilient I'm sure he'll make a full recovery.

smd58 wrote:

Glad you were there to save and teach.

Yeah our communications department release a publication called HHMI Bulletin that goes out Quarterly to an international audience. They are doing a story about me and herpetology. It's actually pretty exciting. I've been putting together a Nature Club and have conducted 2 herpetological surveys so far, with a reporter and photographer for one of them. Everyone here knows I'm the snake guy..and since I work in Environmental Health and Safety, I have some pull as to how we handle our wildlife and management of our land which sits on 681 acres.