One thing on my trekking search agenda has been photographing a Great Blue Heron that hangs out in the plunge pool below the millpond waterfall, and, while I'm exploring, there are always possible late-season odonates zipping in and out of the shadows. But when I arrived, the GBH was hunting somewhere else and the odes were working other venues. Still, it wasn't entirely a wasted side-trip... as if any natural history excursion, even one that produces no check marks on the agenda, is ever truly a bust... for along the bottom rocks of the falls, I spotted something I couldn't have imagined. At first, I thought the waving shape in the slow eddy might have been the back end of an eel, so I took a few preliminary photos to ensure I'd have something to analyze if the mystery critter spooked and vanished. But there was no panicked flight, even when I got right up to what turned out to be the shed skin of, I'm guessing, one of our resident Northern Water Snakes. No sign of the live serpent, but clear evidence that Nerodia sipedon is in the neighborhood and growing fatter and happier.