FLORENCE, S.C. — A South Carolina woman hiking near a creek was startled to find a huge snake hiding near the edge of a creek.
Meredith Langley took photographs of the reptile Tuesday at Jeffries Creek Park in Florence and shared them on Facebook, The State of Columbia reported.
“Note how well he blends in with his surroundings,” Langley said in her post. “This was a good teaching opportunity and example for my own kids who forget not to run ahead of me on trails!” she said.
The post received dozens of comments and was shared by more than 1,000 people on the social media site.
“He’s probably swa|lowed somebody child already,” one poster joked, adding, “I ain’t going on no trails period.”
“What a beast!” another person wrote.
Sean Foley, curator of herpetology at the Riverbanks Zoo & Garden in Columbia, said the reptile is a harmless watersnake, “most likely” a brown watersnake, The State reported.
While they are considered harmless, watersnakes do their best to convince potential thre*ts that they might be ven0mous cottonmouths, Foley told McClatchy News.
“If they are cornered or at*acked they will defend themselves by flattening their heads, str!king, and shaking their tails in leaves,” Foley said. “All these things make them appear dangerous to would-be predat0rs in the hopes that they will be left alone.”
THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SNAKE? Terr!fying 33ft anaconda discovered lurking in caves near dam construction site in Brazil
THIS is the moment a gigantic 33-FEET-long anaconda was found by terr!fied builders on a construction site in Brazil.
The huge reptile, which weighs in at at a whopping 63 stone, was discovered by the workers after they carried out a controlled expl0sion in the Cave of Altamira in the northern state of Para.
Video footage taken by one of the crew pans down the snake’s enormous body – which measures one metre in diameter.
After making the frightening discovery, the workers chained the animal to a crane and later lifted it up to reveal its yellow spotted under belly – a move which was cr!ticised in the comments when the clip was uploaded to YouTube.
It’s claimed the builders ki|led the snake rather than leave it in its natural habitat but this has not been confirmed.
Others believe the animal may have d!ed in the expl0sion, possibly being h!t by falling debris, as its head appeared flat in the video footage.
One user wrote: “I’m not sure this is real, but if it is, sh*me on these people for ki|ling it! A snake that big has probably been alive for a very long time now, just to be ki|led for a few pictures? What a waste.”
Another said: “Human be like ‘oh look a giant rare snake and it maybe the last species on this earth, so lets ki|l it and show it to the world’.”
The Guinness World Record for the longest snake in captivity is currently held by Medusa, a snake in Kansas City, US, which measures 25 feet 2in long.
