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Many urban legends involve unexpected, scary encounters with slithery snakes, and the text and pictures reproduced above are somewhat reminiscent of the tale of a young boy on a fishing expedition who mistakes some small venomous snakes for worms (with tragic results). Examples: The lack of any identifying details about when, where, and under what circumstances these e-mailed photographs were taken makes their accompanying back story difficult to verify and leaves open the possibility that (as often happens) they were simply innocuous pictures to which someone else added a sensational (and fabricated) narrative to explain their origins. (Some versions of the message open with the statement This happened here, Columbus, MS!! but that line appears to be a later addition to the text.) Either way, we can make a few general points about what's described here: Of course, that latter point is of small comfort if one should run across a serpent of the minority venomous variety, as was allegedly the case in the narrative reproduced above, in which the unsuspecting recipient of a gift potted plant supposedly found a couple of baby copperheads. However, the small snakes depicted in these photographs don't bear the distinctive rust-colored hourglass markings or lemon yellow tails of baby copperheads; they're members of some other small, relatively harmless species that have been misidentified. Also, baby copperheads could not have come from eggs in the holes of the cardboard that hatched later, as copperheads, like many species of venomous snakes, produce eggs that develop and hatch inside the mother's body until the young are expelled live (i.e., ovoviparous).
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