>>2091606Alabama born n' raised and I fucking love snakes. Pick some up. Don't be a retard and grab a copperhead though. Do you have a yard with some rocks? Lift/tilt the rocks carefully and check for ring-necked, smooth earth, or DeKay's brown snakes (pic related for all 3). They're easy to identify and totally harmless (won't even get snappy with you and couldn't bite you if they tried), so you can interact with them for a bit before letting them go.
Perhaps learn to identify them too. It's much easier to appreciate a black rat snake when you know it's not a cottonmouth. In general though,
>>2091660 is right. Don't actively fuck with them and they won't fuck with you. I regularly go out looking for rattlesnakes. They're angry bastards, but they're just gorgeous wimps.
>>2091660Totally
>>2091606's nightmare, but you reminded me of the time I was in lower Alabama looking for eastern indigos in gopher tortoise burrows. I spent the day getting down on my hands and knees shining flashlights down those holes. At one of the holes, I got down, didn't see anything, stood up, turned around, and took one step forward when a 3-foot eastern diamondback lit up its tail behind me. I don't know if you've ever been rattled at by a rattlesnake, but diamondbacks are fucking loud. I've been buzzed by northern pacifics and they just don't compare. It scared the shit out of me and induced what I now considered a mild panic attack. Couldn't catch my breath or get my heart rate down for about 20 minutes.
Turns out it had been sitting on top of the burrow I was looking in, so my face had been just a foot away. If it had decided to strike, I'd have been nailed in the head and would have died. After it alerted me to its presence, it slinked forward and down into the burrow till all I could hear was the rattle reverberating out from the hole. Creepy fucking shit. I still lost my mind a couple years later when I got to see another diamondback though. They're just incredible.
