Excuse me while I channel a little rage... I feel worse for the poor snakes than the fucking dumbass who risks death for their religious bullshit. I seriously don't get how people can let religion override the basic instinct of self-fucking-perservation. The million year-old instinct that tells you "This thing bit Ogg and Ogg died shortly thereafter. MAYBE I SHOULDN'T FUCK WITH IT AND LEAVE IT ALONE." Steve Irwin handled snakes and wrestled crocodiles to help preserve their species and take them out of harm's way. These douchebags just frighten clearly lethally-venomous critters because their book, written by a bunch of Bronze Age goat-herders, told them that handling lethal, venomous snakes was a good idea...a people that thought such wonderful things like bloodletting were a smart thing to do.
Seriously, put down the snake, let it go back to wherever it lived before you scooped the poor thing up, and pick up something a smidge less dangerous, like a god damned tambourine! If their idiocy drives a species to extinction, well...I hope the US government deems them a dangerous fucking cult, just like the Branch Davidian and Heaven's Gate, and kicks them in the collective dick. Hell, I bet the only reason they aren't on a watchlist of some sort is because they aren't stockpiling guns and ammo en masse and letting their pastors fuck their daughters because its "god's will."