As a wee one, I was visiting some relatives down south. While playing on a dirt road in a wooded area, I saw something interesting under a twiggy bush and went to go investigate. It looked like a thick coiled rope. As I got closer, it one end rose up and rattled at me. Although my ignorant little kid-brain didn't know it, I was standing just a few feet away from a rattlesnake, and it was firmly telling me to get lost. Now, there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity; one you can't help at times, and the other is the choice. This is the point in the story when the stupidity comes in: I went and got a stick to poke the snake with.
Somewhere behind me, I heard my mom start yelling something, but the way this rattlesnake rattles harder and harder every time I go to poke it is just so interesting I don't pay much attention. Finally, I throw the whole stick at the poor poisonous snake. Completely fed up with me, the snake finally began to uncoil itself, stretching out..and then my mom's hand clamps down on the back of my shirt and I'm flying through the air practically horizontally she was running so fast. Behind us, the snake slithered out across the road, presumably to find another bush less plagued by brats with sticks.
Now, this is the part where I begin to doubt my memory, because I read in books later than rattlesnakes only grow to a max of 7ft. But I distinctly remember seeing, while being pulled away backwards, this guy stretching all the way across the two lane dirt road, at least 12ft long. Maybe there's large species of snakes that rattle, maybe this wasn't a rattler at all, but the point is, I was a stupid lucky little kid that day.
(whoops, length got away from me)