Southern black racer (scientific name: "Coluber constrictor"), the racer is more likely to suffocate or crush its victim into the ground, rather than coiling around it in typical constrictor fashion. Man remains the greatest enemy of black racers. Many are killed on highways and others are intentionally killed out of fear. The white chin causes some people to kill this snake, believing that it is a cottonmouth – a venomous snake more commonly called a water moccasin. The venomous snake has a white lining inside of its mouth. Racers are nonvenomous and do not breed with cottonmouths. Natural enemies include such birds of
C. S. Giscombe his childhood fascination with trains as having an influence in his writing, noting that the railroad is "not sentimental...continuous...intimately connected to features of land and water." C. S. Giscombe C. S. Giscombe (born 1950 Dayton, Ohio) is an African-American poet, essayist, and professor of English at University of California, Berkeley. A graduate of SUNY at Albany and Cornell University, he was editor of "Epoch magazine" in the 1970s and 1980s. He has taught at Cornell University, Syracuse University, Illinois State University, and Pennsylvania State University. As of 2015, he teaches at University of California, Berkeley. His work has appeared in