Picture the head before the bullet hole.

it's a Snake...

or, an ex-snake to be more precise...

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Good shootin' thar Tex!

it looks like one of those harmless garden snakes...  A garter snake most likely, a gopher snake would have a bigger nose.

DavidK I figured that by the way it wiggled.....
Actually I need to know because there are more than one and this is the one my cat brought me. IN THE HOUSE. Now I am holding the cats hostage inside the house and they are driving me crazy but I can't let them back out until I know.

This was prior to your 2nd reply! I'm looking up garden snake now.
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Darn. Not a garden or garter snake.

garter snakes have stripes lengthwise I think. It might be a copperhead.

I thought that but I'm hoping not.
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Plainbelly Watersnake (juvenile)

looks to be a Yellow King or RAT Snake...

Essencay you are the man!!! Thank you so much!! I bow to you and my cats do too, you saved our sanity.

I'm not an expert...that's just the closest picture I could find on the web.

where do you live mgiff? we agree its a 'northern watersnake' (my mother pulled out a garden book)

oh- WAIT!

it could also be a 'Southern watersnake' .

From the pictures I saw, it looks like the Northern and the Plainbelly juvenile. I live in Northern Mississippi so I figured the Northern was out but I found an Arkansas website that had the Plainbelly juvy and this was it! The adult doesn't look like it but the juvy is exact. Thank you so much Essencay and DesignCaddy and everyone else, I was going crazy over this. By the way, your mother probably had the best idea. It was in the garden which I had just disturbed by raking and pulling weeds.

(Now looking up Southern Watersnake)
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