water-snakes

And, instead of watchmen and policemen to keep out nasty things at night, there were thousands and thousands of water-snakes, and most wonderful creatures they were.

The Water Babies 2007

I'm thinking they're probably young copperheads, or maybe just water-snakes.

May 20th, 2005 2005

But see the mischief; many men, knowing that merry company is the only medicine against melancholy, will therefore neglect their business; and in another extreme, spend all their days among good fellows in a tavern or an alehouse, and know not otherwise how to bestow their time but in drinking; malt-worms, men-fishes, or water-snakes, [3546] Qui bibunt solum ranarum more, nihil comedentes, like so many frogs in a puddle.

Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

Instead of that, I am sorry to say, he would meddle with the creatures, all but the water-snakes, for they would stand no nonsense.

The Water Babies 2007

The Quango is said by the natives to contain many venomous water-snakes, which congregate near the carcass of any hippopotamus that may be killed in it.

Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa 2004

By day I had seen water-snakes putting up their heads and swimming about.

Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa 2004

His release from the curse placed upon him is earned, as he himself sees it, by his unconscious blessing of other, decidedly less desirable creatures: "water-snakes" swimming alongside his ship.

'Sweet Influences': Human/Animal Difference and Social Cohesion in Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1794-1806 2001

Such learning about animals and human beings completes what might well be called an eco-communitarian circuit, manifesting as it does a system of intertwined human and animal relationships transgressed against in the Mariner's ignorant slaughter of the albatross and then repaired, in part, by his benediction to the water-snakes and his subsequent transmissions of wisdom to a series of distraught but enthralled "guests."

'Sweet Influences': Human/Animal Difference and Social Cohesion in Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1794-1806 2001

Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.

The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley 2003

Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which lie on the surface.

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon 2002