A few friends and I were visiting a local nature center. We saw this yellow bellied water snake by the trail not moving. I could see part of its belly showing in an unnatural way, and thought it must've been dead. I got closer and it panicked, squirmed some, flattened its head... But it didn't move. I realized it was caught in the netting they had applied to the ground for erosion control. I gave my buddy's wife my snake stick, and had her keep its head down, since it was trying to be pretty bitey. I'm sure it was feeling pretty vulnerable there stuck in the open next to the trail with everybody standing around. I cut the netting off of it, carefully at first, then more aggressively when it felt like progress was going slow, with a few little breaks while the snake squirmed loose and struck at me. Got it cut loose enough for it to crawl off under some brush where it stopped, presumably to rest a bit. All this happened in about a 5 minute span. We wandered on down the trail for 15-20 min or so, then turned around and hiked back through the spot on the way back to the building, and the snake had moved on at that point.