Ah... I know this snake well.

This is the only snake to bite me waaaaay up in the Canadian backwoods.
Everyone (from Europe) was afraid that I was going to die. We were about two days paddle fro the road end, so no chance of medical aid before the poison did its job.

Luckily for me, I had been to a nature centre a couple of days before hand and seen all sorts of snakes there and talked about them with the staff. (Ok, I admit it. I wasn't really talking about the snakes, I was trying to chat up the very cute ranger ;-) )

So I knew that the garter snake venom wouldn't kill me. The bite did hurt a bit though. And I learned really quick to grab just a little closer to the head ;-)