The Lake Sarasota Community Blog

At the Lakeview Park Clean-Up, some residents were picking up some branches of a tree when a dangerous Water Moccasin slithered out and dashed into the water. It might be useful to know one when you see it, but the differences between the venomous Florida Water Moccasin (or Cottonmouth) and the wholly harmless Water Snake can be subtle. Here are a few images and links that might help. First, here's a Water Moccasin Another shot of a Water Moccasin (click for a huge image): Here's the plain old harmless Florida Water Snake: Another clue (thanks Ray): When in water, Water Moccasins move on top of the water - almost as if they were gliding on the surface, like this: Water Moccasins are to be met with extreme caution. "When a moccasin is nesting or has her young in their nest it will aggressively defend that area," says Ray. "Moccasins have aggressively attacked people." Water Snakes tend to be partly submerged, partly out of the water, more like this: Click f...

Here's Ray's report about Sunday's Lakeview Park clean-up, which involved folks from Lake Sarasota and from the Sarasota Sky Pilots. A major thank-you to all who came out to help: We had a good turn out at the park yesterday.... I think there were 9 or 10 residents signed in on Kim's sign in sheet before Sky Pilots started showing up. Kim left the sign in sheets with Franklin if you want a complete list of people that attended. Got a lot of stuff pulled from the canal. Sky Pilots did mostly trimming of trees hanging in the way of the disc throwing on each of the holes. We completely filled the dumpster & had enough stuff laying by the fence and along the sides of the canal to fill the dumpster two more times. Caution: water moccasins and gators: There are water moccasins in the canal! I seen for the first time as I was picking up some branches from the canal's edge a moccasin shot out from under and swam into the canal. I saw it swimming a few minutes later ...