grown American Texas Rat Snake.

Hint: snakes don't crawl that way.

Of the body is looped under the bottom half?

You have it! I put the subject in the refrigerator to slow her down and she coiled her body over her head to insulate it. When I plucked her from the container and placed her on the prop I failed to correct her posture.

But a lot of answers were already posted.

Lower half of the coil over the head and the first 1/3 body says staged to me.

In the wild snakes keep the front part of their body free. Any coiling will have the front over the back. When the temp gets cold, as in my refrigerator, they coil the body over the head to insulate it as much as a cold blooded creature can. I failed to correct that when I placed her on the prop in my studio.

I gotta' pay more attention to the details . . .

a trimming off a tree in my back yard. The stump she is on is a section of Bradford Pair that I keep for my smoker.

I hadn't thought of using greens from my fridge as a background but now that you mention it that will be an option when I'm shooting in the winter months!

I had to read all the responses to see it.

It's a beautiful shot, Andy.

in the wild don’t look so trimmed.

But yeah, the snake looks like it should be laying horizontally.

I was emulating the soft light that filters through the trees; a large soft light source with minimal shadow definition. I'll look carefully at my lighting and the results.

I guess she was a bit stressed out. She did loosen up and spread out as her body temp increased bur so did her speed of motion which made it difficult to control her. That's not good for me or her.

I'll try to loosen the pose in future studio settings to make the subject look more natural and relaxed. Nothing I did harmed her and I was careful to return her to the wild in a safe and food secure place within a day.

I saw another snake on my walk today. About 3 feet long and an inch thick. It was against the bank of my local lake. When it saw me (and dog Jack) it vanished into a cranny not big enough to hold my flat hand. It is amazing how they can do things like that.

I like them because they eat the rats in my barn. Early this year, I saw the longest and thickest one that I have ever seen. A conservative estimate of the length was 6'. I left her unmolested to go about her job.