The Widening Gyre Interests Birding Archives Community Rogues' Gallery Signs of the Times

Susan Moss

The Cobra of Barboursville

"One Tuesday evening, I rushed home from work to feed my dogs, prior to teaching a class, and when I went out the door to get into my car, there was movement in the mulch. I'm used to that because there are frogs that live in caverns like catacombs underneath the mulch. But when I looked, it wasn't a frog and it just kept raising up, and it was a snake.

It was raising up as though someone were playing music, and it hissed and it lunged and it opened up a cape at the back of its neck like a cobra and I didn't know what to do. I kept looking and it kept following me and none of my neighbors were home and I couldn't find anyone to do anything about the snake.

But it was very, very interesting because it had a diamond shaped head (slit not oval eyes). On its side, it had an Indian pattern of indigo like a basketweave pattern and its belly was banana yellow. And it just kept raising out of the mulch and you could never see the end of it. But it just got taller and taller and taller and where ever I went it would lunge for me.

Finally, I locked my dogs in the basement so they wouldn't come around and start playing with it and I went to leave to go teach class not knowing what to do and being terrified about leaving the snake there and, as I went way far around the porch and looked over, it had followed every move I made and kept hissing and lunging.

Later I was told that somebody did come and shot it. But I was told that it was a water snake, which I don't believe because it was in a mulch pile and it had a hood like a cobra and it acted very much like a cobra.

If it was a water snake, it was certainly disoriented because it was not going toward water. Any water would have been in the total opposite direction. It did look psychotic."

Susan Moss, November 9, 1996

Can you can identify Susan's snake? Send your comments to george@loper.org