I use to have garden snakes in my yard but the darn cats kept catching and killing them. Anyway it would be
alarming to accidentally pick up a handful of snake! Once when I was pulling weeds with no gloves on out came a very plump pg looking spider and I felt so bad in killing it but had a hunch it was a black widow and after I killed it flipped it over and saw the markings that it was, wow, could of been a zillion babies! Of course that was when I lived in Ca. not here in N.E I don`t think we have Black Widows , but I could be wrong...at any rate I wear my gloves in case there is any bug I don`t want to encounter.
Anyway your picture, looks like a healthy happy snake!
