It's a young hognose snake-completely harmless.  This young hognose looks about the same size and thickness of a western pygmy, and has similar dark markings. But if you look at the western pygmy, you'll see a rusty stripe that begins on the head and goes down the back.
  Hognose snakes come in a variety of colors. The younger ones are sharply marked and they get darker as the grow to adults size of 24-40+inches(some of them are black)  They have bizarre behavior for defense-incl. spreading their head/neck, flattening their bodies, hissing, head butting and playing dead!

Yea! It has a little red just behind its head but that's it. I had seen another photo in this forum identified as a hognose that had a red rust stripe down its back so I was somewhat confused. This snake did seem to flatten out its body around the head. I guess a pygmy would not do that? Thanks for the info!

  2 wks ago, a classmate of mine showed me a picture on his i-phone(?) of a hognose that he killed(b/c it had triangular head- i.e. spread head )  I told him what it was, of course.