I came by my interest in venomous snakes naturally. In the early 1950s, my dad taught toxicology at the U. of Florida med school and among the toxic things that interested him was snake venom. He and the dean of the med school were big bass fishermen and they used to fish a lake that was a swamp at one end and loaded with cottonmouths. I went with them a few times and John is right, they drop out of trees and into your boat. Since my childhood, I have searched out venomous snakes all over the world from the deep South, to Central America, to Africa, and to Asia. Some of them give me the willies [the fer de lance] and some of them make me want to bring them home as pets [the boomslang] but I'm actually not that stupid.
By the way, John, the biggest, ugliest, worst smelling cottonmouth I've ever seen was just outside of Houston, Texas. Whenever someone mentions cottonmouths, that's the snake that comes into my mind.