[Governor Dinwiddie]

I know the cottonmouth can swim. I suppose they could bite a swimmer. Generally though, stepping on a snake or surprising it is more likely to trigger a bite. I don't know about rattlesnakes swimming being a danger. I think most snakes can swim if they have to. I'm not sure any rattlesnake prefers to.

I knew a lady who survived the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane. She said the family had to retreat to the roof of their house because the water got so high. She said snakes were slithering out of the water onto the roof and her father had an ax and was chopping the snakes right and left.

[Tennessee Conservative]

I grew up in the swamps near the Everglades until we moved to TN in ‘68. A really bad hurricane blew in one year. We sheltered at the shelter where my dad worked. He boarded up the windows before the storm. When we got home after the storm, the windows were still boarded up, but the door was blown off. The house had a couple of feet of water in it, a whole bunch of mad rattlesnakes, and one 6’ alligator. The young gators are the meanest. The old big ones are kind of lazy.

Fun times.