PC and all: I'm a snake lover but I can relate to being scared of them too. I was really scared by a snake when I was a kid, but my mom made sure to explain that the snake was scared too and that they're an important part of a healthy ecosystem. If I run into a wild snake unexpectedly it still gets my heart pumping.
I remember running into my first wild rattlesnake. I was with a group of people, mostly early twenties city slickers like myself, plus a housemate of mine who has a real phobia of snakes and no interest whatever in learning to like them. He sat down on a rock with a couple other folks, and we saw the rattler slither under the rock about three feet from him. It scared the crap out of me to think about someone getting bit. My heart was pounding, and I yelled "Hey guysmove slowly, but get away from that rock!" My housematethe one with the snake phobiastayed perfectly calm, much calmer than I felt. Anyway, to make a long story short, people with snake phobias are fine, too. And my housemate's probably right... there's an evolutionary advantage to being afraid of snakes, as long as it doesn't make you do anything stupid!
