Don't Know Whether to Be Sad or Glad

The skin of the snake I killed

Photo of Western Massasauga from the Web

Pic of juvenile rat snake from Web (the head of the snake I killed did not look like this)

 The snake when it was freshly dead

I killed a snake today while working at clearing the huge pile of debris that someone created with a backhoe or dozer. It looks like a Western Massasauga. But then ... it could also just possibly have been a young rat snake (it was definitely not a grown rat snake). It was very definitely not a hognose, as the head was completely different from a hog nose head.  Its head looked like a pit viper head, but there were no obvious rattles on its tail.The massasauga's rattles are said to be small, but still ... this one had no rattles at all, far as I could see.

Anyhow, it did not go to waste. The skin is in the freezer until I can get a tanning kit, and I fed the meat to the dog and chickens. There's a delicious looking recipe online for spicy snake meat pasta but my weight increased by 5 pounds when I had a sinus infection recently and felt too bad to exercise, and I am on a raw-veggie-with-the-occasional-egg diet for a while.

If anyone sees this and has an opinion as to what sort of critter's life I ended today, please let me know.