Doesn't it take a while for a snake to get that big?
According to what I have read, mature in 2 years. There is a chance we had some which I never saw, then ended up with so many saw them all of the time.
More than you ever wanted to know about water snakes:
Baby water snakes are born in June, July, or August. The mother gives birth to five to 60 young, sometimes over a period of several days. One female was observed to give birth to 99 babies. The young are 7 to 10 inches long.
They grow to be 24 to 42 inches. Females are generally bigger than males.
They give birth to live young (viviparous) after a 58-day gestation period. This snake is mature at 2 to 3 years of age.
These snakes eat frogs, turtles, fish, and other small animals found in their habitat. Sometimes they will round up fish or tadpoles with their long bodies and them eat them, or simply swim through a school of fish with their mouths open. Northern water snakes may also eat dead fish.
The young snakes will grow quite quickly for the first couple of years, doubling in size by the time they are two years old, when they become sexually mature. From the third year onwards the Northern Water Snake will continue to grow, but at a much slower pace. As they get older, they will also become darker in color. Snakes that have been kept in captivity have been known to live up to ten years, but there is very little evidence about the life span of the Northern Water Snake in the wild.
Northern Water Snake is one of the larger species of snakes in the United States
A sedentary species, the watersnake’s home range is the size of the wetland it inhabits, or less than a 400-foot stretch of a river or stream.
