Snakes in the grass

Walking along a path beside the pond at Prairie Ridge Ecostation, we found these two.  I had heard that black rat snakes will eat other snakes, but here's the proof.  

The unfortunate snake is probably a brown snake. (here)

The hungry snake is definitely a black rat snake (here),  He watched us closely and shook his tail to scare us off.

 

Black Rat Snake

This large black rat snake crawled across our trail, out into the forest floor.  He stopped, raised his head like he was looking at something, and then lowered his head and moved on.  I watched the trail for crawling things the rest of the hike!