Carolina Gardening: Is this a copperhead?, 1 by sos210_14

sos210_14 wrote:
I found this little guy yesterday under a pile of limbs that I had removed the day before from the Bradford pear trees near my garden. The cornfield near the garden had been mowed and plowed the same day and I think he came from the field seeking shelter. After I loaded (by hand) all the limbs onto our truck I began raking the leaves and he scooted out! He remained frozen with his head up while I called DH to come with the snake identification book and a shovel. My DH and I hate to randomly kill snakes because we live on a farm and appreciate all the help we can get from our friendly snakes in dealing with the mice that come with the territory, but after checking our snake book we decided that this one had to go (since we have a 5 year old grandson who lives with us). We identified it as a copperhead. Does anyone have expertise in snake identification? We are never sure whether the real thing matches the pictures in the book and would appreciate knowing whether we dispatched a potentially benign mouser or a potential danger to our grandson. By the way, you might notice that the head, with about 4 inches of the snake's body has been severed from the body. The head kept moving and trying to strike until DH totally dispatched it...