Oops, didn't mention a little detail
. I lived in the Arizona mountains for a while. Pretty wild up there - had a bear in the front yard, and a mountain lion in the back yard. Tarantulas were always around, and I did have a rattler on the front doorstep (no fair snakes before coffee, although I did wake up in a hurry). The one that I really did not care for was the scorpion - as he found me before I saw him. That wasn't so much fun.
When riding the horses on the dirt road, often there'd be a rattler and I'd flip him out of the bushes and get him to "pose" for the tourists photos. Luckily, unlike the scorpion, I always saw the snakes first.