Snakes ALIVE!

I took my son to Park Day today (our homeschooler group has a weekly get together at local parks) and we met up at Round Rock Memorial Park. Nice park with a creek that runs through it. Usually we take the kids down to the actual "Round Rock" that the city is named for. But since it has rained recenty, the creek was really full and none of us were too sure about the water quality, so unfortunately no frolicking in the creek this time. HOWEVER, when we arrived there was a big portion of our group over by the water so we ventured to see what all the hubbub was about. It was a medium-ish sized what I believe to be a water moccasin that had managed to either catch a fish or came across a dead fish. Either way, the fish was WAY too big for this snake! The snake was probably as big around as a good sized banana and the fish was the size of a pork tenderloin. Now I'm aware that snakes have jaws they can unhinge and devour prey much larger than they are, but this little snake was in one hell of a predicament for HOURS! He got the head down and was stretched to maximum capacity as he got to the area of the fish with fins. Ooooh, was it ever painful to watch! He stayed in the same spot forever. And for awhile it actually looked as though he were desperately trying to get free of it. But as you know, once a snake gets his teeth in something, it is awful damn hard for it to "spit" it out, especially when it had gotten the fish in that far. The adults all took turns monitoring the snake (and the horde of children that were mesmerized by it) to make sure no one got to close. I mean granted, that snake would have never been able to bite someone with that giganto fish in its mouth, but still. We were all pretty much of the opinion that this little snake was possibly doomed, but sure enough after at least 3 1/2 hours, he finally got past the fins and managed to swallow the whole thing! We were glad it was a happy ending as we all wanted to help it, but none of us were willing to risk our lives messing around with a venomous and notoriously bad-tempered snake! What an amazing thing to witness though! Wish I had taken my camera.