This cottonmouth was foraging in a muddy, drying pool full of madtom catfish, and occasionally stuck his head out to scope out his surroundings.

-- Terry Farrell (terence.farrell@stetson.edu), December 17, 1998

Answers

Gives me the willy's.Was it eating the catfish?

-- John Tait (jtait@northcom.net), December 17, 1998.

John,

Yes, it was eating the catfish. Minutes after this picture was taken it grabbed one and swallowed it. Catfish are a spiny fish so it got stuck in the snake throat (a pectoral spine was noticably distending the skin of the snakes throat) for about 15 minutes before the snake got it down.

-- Terry Farrell (tfarrell@stetson.edu), December 18, 1998.

Nice image! Great shot, Terry. Knowing how hard this was to capture I'm amazed at how well you did it! Will we see more from you here? Cheers! --Joe

-- Joe Cheatwood (cheatwoo@ufl.edu), December 21, 1998.