Eeeeek! But cool.

This guy (or girl) gave me a start while cleaning out my pool's skimmer basket. Fortunately, I have a hook for lifting it so my hand wasn't too close. My first thought was, "Coral snake!" but I remembered the rhyme my dad taught me when I was a little girl: Red on yellow --Kills a fellow.

In other words, if the red and yellow bands on a snake are next to each other, with no black in between, it's a venomous coral snake. If there's black between the red and yellow, you're okay.

My son and I looked this snake up in Snakes of Georgia and South Carolina and learned that it is called a scarlet snake (Cemophora coccinea) and they are usually a little over 1 foot long, just like this one. It is different from a scarlet king snake in that it's bands do not completely circle the body. A scarlet snake has the red, black and white/yellow bands on top, but has a mostly white belly. And, for the record, I didn't kill it. It hadn't survived the night in the pool.

Finding it in our pool wouldn't have surprised me if I had read the snake book more carefully. To quote: "The scarlet snake is one of the most common snakes to fall into residential swimming pools in areas with sandy soil."

Well, there you go.