Sneaky!

This little brown snake (yes, that's its name - brown snake a.k.a. Storeria dekayi) was slithering along the ground in the forest. It's about the thickness of a pencil and not very shy, so I was able to get close enough to get a couple decent pictures of it.

Just for a sense of scale, the reddish brown round things toward the upper left-ish section of the picture above are broken acorns.  The grass is pretty normal field grass, too, so it gives a good idea of size as well. 

At the risk of scaring it away, I took a chance at getting even closer so that I could get a little bit of detail on the markings. It's really well camouflaged, dressed all in grays and browns. I know that some folks aren't fond of snakes, but I've always sort of liked them (but then, I was the kid that turned over rocks and logs looking for salamanders, so I guess that's no real surprise...).