Good rant...
I always love that part of our snake talks when we do them- people, especially white males over 50 years old- seem to all share this defining cottonmouth experience in their lives where they and their family were stalked, followed and attacked by a cottonmouth and sometimes even the "ball of cottonmouths" - its so predictable. 

Now, my technique is to say " i know some of you have got stories about how cottonmouths bla bla bla, but let me just say that we have been messing with cottonmouths for 25 years and I have NEVER had one chase me or act 'aggressive' - I'm not saying you're stories is false, I'm just saying its odd that we (snake people) are purposely seeking them out and interacting with them and have NEVER heard of ONE instance where one 'attacked' someone or acted territorial...bla bla...

It usually works and diffuses the redneck in the back that wants to tell you a good one, but some folks, you will never get through to.

My wife's words  last year, as I'm off to a state park to make a presentation to school groups:  "....and help David to be nice to those people.  Amen"   I had been challenged at Moro Bay State Park in front of a school group earlier that week by a parent volunteer who had been 'attacked' in her driveway by a cottonmouth , and I wasn't very nice to her.  I could make up an excuse that she had caught me off guard, but that would be pretty lame.

But it usually the most accurate.

I can't believe how many customers come to my work to buy guns to kill snakes with. It's ridiculous. Some of the stories that come along with them are pretty funny though. I heard a cottonmouth actually climbed up and opened some lady's screen door, because it wanted to eat her cats. I have heard a story of a 15 foot "chicken snake" that had killed two black labs.

My favorite is the 11 foot timber that a customer killed recently because it killed all of his sheep.
"Coyotes couldn't possibly kill that many sheep. The snake started poisoning them, and it spread and killed them all. The coyotes just came and ate them after they was poisoned."

Well, at least you don't have the "i've got water moccasins all over my property, i have 2 ponds and they hang out all over the place." when in fact, that is an unverified species in my county, the nearest verification is 90 miles south!

Then i got one guy that says he found a pigmy, well it was in fact a juvie prairie king, and i told him that pigmy rattlesnakes were only found about 200 miles from here... "well couldn't they travel, i mean, snakes do move around." yeah, one 20 inch snake slithered its way 200 miles in its lifetime, ha!

we've only got copperheads here, well timbers too, but they haven't been verified in my county for 50 years... i have yet to see one copperhead, but everyone i know sees them everywhere! how is that? i've given up on people, now, i just try to educate dogs on what species are around and not around, they seem to understand me better!