I've had baby cotton snakes in the pool-usually dead, too by the time I find them, but saved a couple. They look just like diamondbacks, except for the shape of the head and the tip of the tail is pointy rather than blunt.
What did your snake look like, other than long and very thin?

Colony probably not correst. How about a bed or nest? Did you know a bunch of rattlers is called a rumba? Once up at Big Lake campground early one morning we heard a woman screaming bloody murder. Raced over to where she was and she was pointing at a HUGE squirming bunch of rattlers near the path to the outhouse. Rumba is a good name for that.

Same color all over - light tan. Not a cotton snake. I looked them up and I'd faint if I came across one of those in my skimmer. Maybe it's not a snake? But sure slitters and works its tongue like one.

What is a "cotton snake", btw? Never heard that one before... Perhaps you mean gopher snake or bull snake (Pituophis). That looks a bit like a diamondback.

Was it one of these little ground snakes, I have found them at a few different places I have lived in the valley, harmless.

That's what my neighbor called it-I've never looked it up so I just called it what he did. It looked nearly identical to a diamondback, as I said, except the head was not the right shape, and the tail was sharply pointed. Coloring and markings were very similar, though. He apparently had an adult in his yard that made a hissing sound that sounded like a rattlesnake rattle, also. Would that be a gopher or bull snake?

(edit) googling gopher snake, I think it probably was a sonoran gopher snake. It was a baby, but it looked very similar.

Hey Captain that's it! Thanks so much. I googled it and quite interesting. They sure are elusive since I only see them when they end up in the skimmer or our cats bring us one to admire. We always make them release it.

LeslieM sounds like a Gopher snake we caught one when I was a kid about three or four feet long, they are not venomous but have a nasty bite, they mimic rattlers with their posture and strike as well.