LOL... wow.

FYI... I do still carry that "snake gun" if I'm out in the swamps but I have learned quite a bit about snakes since. I kill the venomous ones I find in the vicinity of my house (yes, sometimes with a hoe or shovel) and I leave the nonvenomous one alone.

The first thing that I have discovered is the more we use our back yard the less we see snakes. The second thing is that I do my best to keep the grass cut quite low and I limit places for them to be (for example I have no landscape shrubbery or mulch and I have no raised structures. We've taught the kids to identify snakes and also to leave them alone regardless of the species.

It has also helped that we have a family of owls living in the woods near the house and we've had a bunch of armadillos around as well. They're a pain but they do eat snakes eggs I hear.

Anyway... I still haven't bought any snake boots as I also hear that good thick leather boots will foil a cottonmouth bite and I don't walk around too much in the water.