Is it red on black is bad? Red on yellow? As this beautiful boldly striped snake wriggles to the side of the trail I try in vain to recall the rhyme the rangers told us to differentiate between a venomous Coral snake and a harmless Scarlet King snake. I got nothing. I watch but give the fellow all the space he needs and google it as soon as we got home. Guess what, the rhyme is: “Red and Yellow kill a fellow, Red and Black friend of Jack.” We have encountered our first Eastern Coral Snake.