I know, tturner. These things sometimes get way off course. I often regret that I can't not leave things alone. A wise man walks away from what he cannot change.
But concerning the snakes you mentioned, in the late 70's I was fishing alone in a boat on a lake. Ran out of bait about noon on Sunday. Tied the boat to a tree and followed a small stream into the mountain looking for bait. Turning over rocks to find lizards. I turned one rock with my right hand, and brought that hand back. There lay a lizard. I reached to get him and got struck on the hand near the thumb by a small rattlesnake. He had let me reach over him the first time to turn over the rock, but the second reach prooved too much for his patience. It felt like I'd been hit with a hammer. Even though my hand was moving very fast to grab the lizard, he still got me. The snake slithered away but I followed to make certain what had bitten me. It was indeed a timber rattler, but not big. Probably about a foot long. I was a bit surprised, because the timber rattlers I've encountered in the past were not near water. I backed away from him, sit upon a log and cut the wound open with my pocket knife. In the awful fear of the moment, I felt the cutting not at all. One of his fangs had gone deep, the other not so much. I sucked blood and crud from the wound and spit it out. Made myself walk back to the boat, then gave it full throttle all the way back to the dock, which a boater at that lake is not supposed to do. The dock attenant came running out of his shack to fuss at me, but I leaped from the boat not even taking time to tie her off. "Snake!" I screamed and got in my truck. I figured if a trooper stopped me, he would know me as a brother, and make sure I got there all the sooner. The ER was about 25 miles away. By the time I got there the hand was swelling and my thinking blurry. Nurses helped me inside where I quickly told my story.
I live through that, with only a slight bit of nerve damage. But after release, my hand swelled up like a football. Somedays later a fever took me and blood poison was starting up my arm, a wide red streak. In my fevered delerium, I didn't recognize the problem. It got to my shoulder before someone told me what that meant. Back to the ER and a stay at the hospital for anitibiotics.
I hated and feared snakes after that, which I knew was a merely a mental defect brought on by a single occurrence. I had nightmares of stepping into water where there were hundreds of snakes. So, based on what I'd been taught about mental trauma, I went to a stream noted for its water snakes. Non-poisonous. I was in my 20's that summer and couldn't see going back to college with irrational fears. I waded the icky places until I found one. I don't know what he was, fat and brown, but too far west to be a moccassin. Upon being disturbed, he immediately headed across the shallow stream. Chased him down and picked him up. Handled him a while until my horror subsided. I did that 2 more times within 2 days. I still get scared when I see a wide-bodied snake, but I don't panic anymore.
lt's like most anything else in life that we fear. Once you face it and let it do it's worst, it ain't so bad.
I conquered my fear of heights in a similar fashion, but that's another story.
It would be difficult to relate such experiences to fear of wolves, as I don't know how one might approach a wolf that didn't immeditely run away. Perhaps we need to drive all the way to Alaska to find the really scary ones.
