OK Andrew if the tame stories aren't doing it for you I got a couple more.
I used to weekend camp often out of the back of a Civic wagon when I was hang gliding regularly. A local flying hill of mine had a few snakes, sometimes, with rattles. Didn't ever bother me or the rest of the crew until that one time... I got there late, threw out the foam that I carried in back and then the slim sleeping bag as it was Kansas summer and likely 75+ degrees all night.
Got up the next morning and picked up the foam mattress and rattle rattle rattle. Massasauga rattler had crawled under for the night. So from then on the few picnic tables were grabbed fast for us light travelers. True story. Scare you enough yet?
The cool thing about Massasauga rattlers is that they are small at 2 to 2.5 feet fully grown and use a neat method of travel. In the tallgrass plains of Kansas they crawl on the top of the grass, kinda half bent over grass stalks and they slither right along. That year turned out to be a VERY good year for Massasauga rattlers as we saw them regularly all summer and a guy out in the lake even got bit by one that joined him in his little inflatable raft. I came across 4 in one day that summer. We hardly ever saw them before or after that summer in the 18 years I regularly wen there. Wilson Lake near Wilson-Russell Kansas if any needs to know.
Found a road killed western diamondback Rattler just last week about a mile from my house. The thing is rattlers are kinda like bears, they'd rather just go away then bite you if they can get away or scare you away first. Of course the Timber Rattlers over in Eastern Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri are a bit worse They're the ones we find with the bear bells in their poop.!