Copperhead

or Cottonmouth, a venomous reptile related to the rattlesnake and the moccasin. Its general color is coppery; top of head, coppery-red; belly, yellowish; length, up to forty inches. It is nowhere abundant. It ranges from New England to Wisconsin south and westward to Texas. The copperhead is an inhabitant of marshes and meadows, woods and rocks. It is not found in a prairie country. It lives on mice, frogs, and birds. During the Civil War, Northern men with Southern sympathies were called "copperheads" as a term of extreme opprobrium. See Moccasin; Rattlesnake