They are called a hog-nose because they have this extension in the nose area. I think it is to make them resemble a poisonous snake. If you can get one where it cannot get away from you, it will flatten his head like a cobra and mimic it's strike (makes me think we must have had cobras in North America at some point).
If that doesn't scare you off, he moves to his next trick: play dead. He will writhe around on the ground in death throes, then roll over on his back and lie still with his tongue hanging out. If I recall, he makes himself stink like death too. And best yet, if you roll him back upright, he rolls right back over and resumes his death pose. Truly great fun as a kid!
I’m the “snake wrangler” in our family. When we lived in our first house, somehow a garden snake got into the basement and confronted my wife when she was doing laundry. I happend to be home at the time, and for some reason, I knew from the scream that it had to be a snake. Even a boy growing up in Queens learns to handle garden snakes, I just scooped him up and tossed him in the flower garden.
One time, however, my daughter, about five at the time, came running into the front yard panting, “Get Daddy, get Daddy.” I knew that Mommy was the go to person for skin knees, or other emergencies, so I knew that there was only one possible emergency that required Daddy. Seems a hog-nose snake had come out of the wood pile next to the swing set where she had been playing. I wasn’t familar with the species and the SOB went into his king cobra act. I still scooped him up, but we writhed and twisted like crazy and bit me right though my gardening glove. That was it! No more Mr. Niceguy. I tossed him about twenty feet into the flower garden. (Normally, I’d just put them down gently.)