u/iceyfire3076

Is this a water snake or cottonmouth? Full story: This snake wandered into our garage a few weeks ago and due to the vertical lines on the mouth, I believed it was a water snake. Others have told me it was a cottonmouth. It was not aggressive and seemed as interested in us as we were in him. I believe he's been eating frogs out of the pool, but he was coming from the direction of the pond and headed to our back creek. We have a lot of water and a lot of snakes. I'd like to know if I got the ID right. Thanks!

EDIT to add that we ushered it out of the garage and wished it safe travels to the creek.

I've been experimenting with making pound cakes and I finally found a recipe that has a good texture, etc, but the top always has this weird ring. What am I doing wrong? Is my cake pan too close to the top of the oven? Do I need to let the batter sit in the pan before I put it in the oven? Recipe is as follows:

2 sticks unsalted butter (room temp)
3 cups baking sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Cream butter, sugar, salt together for 3 minutes on medium speed.
5 large eggs, room temperature, added one at a time.
3 cups cake flour
1 cup cold heavy whipping cream
Add flour and cream alternately, but begin and end with cream.
2 tsp vanilla
Scrape sides throughout mixing process.
Bake in preheated oven at 325 for 1 hour 10 minutes or until a wooden stick comes out clean.

Thanks for any help!