Two weeks ago, while I was on vacation in Alabama, I was within a couple of inches of touching a timber rattlesnake's tail after I bent down to pick something up off the ground. (The snake was in the overgrown grass, so I didn't notice it, until I almost touched it). Thankfully, it wasn't turned facing the opposite direction, or else I'd have been seriously screwed. I backed several feet away from it and watched as it turned around and slithered over the stone I had wanted to pick up. I've seen my share of non-venomous chicken snakes, ribbon snakes, and king snakes, but this was my first encounter with a venomous snake, so needless to say it took me a long time to stop shaking.
Then yesterday, when I stepped out on my front porch, I found a venomous cottonmouth moccasin staring at me. It coiled up and struck toward me, and I screamed and jumped back inside the house. I watched it out my living room window though, because I knew my husband and children were on their way home from visiting my in-laws, and I wanted to make sure it slithered away before they got home. Well, thirty minutes later, it was still in our front yard, so my husband ended up having to shoot it. (There was no way he could have killed it with a shovel because it was too big). If my kids or pets had stumbled upon this snake, it would have been horrible.
Anyway, so I'm really tired of having close encounters with snakes. Hurry up winter!