I found this little snake in a snowshoe path behind my house on Christmas day. It was alive, but very sluggish. It looked like it's tail was perhaps injured. It was near a culvert where I am guessing it might have been pulled out by a predator. We have fox, fisher , coyotes, owls and ravens here. I put it under a tree root, hoping it would take shelter, but the next day I found it dead in a footprint about 3 feet from the root. All the photos are of the dead snake, taken primarily for the record, as I was asked to document it for the Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas: http://community.middlebury.edu/~herpatlas/