I would say it is a milk snake, not the rat snake, different coloring and pattern. Anyway the wife's aunt thought she caught a copperhead and it was the same thing, a little milk snake. Thankfully it was unharmed so we just let it go, I hate it when people kill snakes.
A word on copperheads though. I have been trekking through the woods for years during the summer months and have never come across a copperhead. I think they are much less common than most people think. The problem is the same cryptic pattern that the copperheads employ looks similar to other snakes so anytime a snake is spotted with a cryptic pattern it is assumed to be venomous. However there are differences in patterns, coloration, head structure and how the eye looks.