When I lived in Maryland I used to go up into the New Jersey pine barrens fairly often and it wasn't at all unusual to find pine snakes. Most of them were pretty docile even right out of the wild. But there was one that got right pissy with me, but certainly my fault. I had walked into a clearing among the pine trees just in time to spot the last half of a big pine snake crawling into the bushes on the far side. So I launched myself after it and got there just in time to grab him by the tail and yank him back into the clearing before he could vanish. That was NOT a happy snake after being treated like that!
Back in Pete Kahl's younger days I took him up into the NJ pine barrens to show him around. I had my Bronco back then, and we were driving around on one of the uncountable unmarked sand roads up there. Pete asked me if I had ever found a pine snake just crossing the road, and I told him, no, never seen that. Of course it wasn't more than 10 seconds later that we saw a big pine snake crossing the road right in front of us. So Pete got to catch his first pine snake. I believe he just released it again, but I honestly can't remember.
Interesting bit of pine snake trivia here. From what I have been told, New Jersey had some sort of program where they had collectors going out to collect pine snake eggs and gravid females. They would take the eggs, release the females, and incubate the eggs to hatching. Then would take the babies and release them back into the wild, kind of a headstart program. Well rumor has it that the first albino northern pines hatched for someone involved with this program, and apparently those albinos never made it back into the wild, for some reason....
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