Just so you know, as far as snakebites go, there are around ten to fifteen deaths per year related to snakebites in the US. Most snakebites are from non-venomous snakes, and, since venomous snakes have the choice of using venom or not, only about half the bites from venomous snakes result in poisoning. Chances of death from a poisonous snake bite, at least in the US, are about one in 500.

The cottonmouth isn't an aggressive animal, and it's reputation is pretty much undeserved.

Curiously, men between the ages of 17-27 are most likely to be bitten, nearly half of the people who get bitten are drunk at the time. Not surprisingly, most of the people who get bitten by snakes attempting to handle them in some way when it happens.

For those of you who are interested, the state with the highest number of snakebites per capita is North Carolina--where there are about twenty snakebites per 100,000 population, which is five times the national average. You can draw your own conclusions from the above.

If you want to get bitten by a poisonous snake, you'll do much better in either Africa or Asia, where the snakes are way more poisonous, and way more people are bitten.

As far as "Lonesome Dove"--I'd be real interested to see where that snakebite story came from. It seems to me that if you were a cottonmouth in a rain swollen river full of cattle, you'd have a lot better things to do than bite an Irishman.