I could say I work in a nest of snakes...

[quasigeostrophy]

...and I wouldn't be making a political commentary about my office-mates. At least four times during last spring, summer, and fall this happened. Today, I got my first visitor of this year. I work in a corner office of the ground floor, two feet from a levee holding up the narrow strip of earth between the retention pond behind our building and the building itself. I just got up from my desk to go out to the lab, and almost stepped on a young water snake very well camouflaged on the carpet outside my office door. It was about the size of a pencil in diameter, and about 10 inches long. I have no general fear of snakes, but I really don't want them continually visiting my office. The facilities manager and I scooped it into a ball jar - one of the hardware engineers upstairs wants to show it to his son's class, and then he'll release it outside by the retention pond.