re: 87 lb cottonmouth?

I'm about to sound like a nut, and I'm not sure that one is real this being the internet and all, but when I was a kid, my brother and I saw one that big if not bigger on a log in a pond by our house while we were fishing. I stayed and watched it while he ran home and got a shotgun.

It looked like a freaking python laying doubled up on that log. Just an enormous snake. So we're up on land and it's out in the pond on the log and he shoots it but misses the head and it popped that white mouth open just like they do when they're little then it turned around and bit itself once on the back then went back to that white mouth open position with his head up and my brother popped it in the head and it just fell dead on the log.

Went home and got a canoe because we knew nobody was gonna believe it but by the time we got up to it, we were both so creeped out by the thing neither one of us were going to touch it, so we tried to get it with paddles. Eventually it just slid off the log. Needless to say, we weren't going in after it.

True story. And seeing that pic is the first time I've ever seen one that looked like what we killed that day. At the time I was about 12, and it was doubled up on a five foot long log hanging off the sides with that huge body like a damn python, we estimated it at 8 feet.

My brother hasn't been right in the head about snakes since then. lol