BD... not having to deal to much (read "at all") with the copperhead variety of pits... I don't know to horrible much about them. However... I know a good rattlesnake bite can make you very sore for a very long time. One of our local radio personalities was bit last summer while hiking and she was in recovery for about 6 weeks before she could come back to work.
Everytime I take my Boy or Girl Scouts (or family, or friends) out we have a mandatory "Ms. Chris is paranoid" lecture where we talk about all the creepy crawlies (vegetable AND animal) that we're likely to encounter. I stress (or try to.. very hard to get through to a group of teenage boys sometimes)... anyways.. I stress the importance of looking where you're stepping and where you're putting your hands/feet/toes/nose/fingers before you put them there.
Thankfully most of the creepy crawlies we have to worry about out here in the American Southwest have those nifty little buzzers attached to their bottom ends to warn us. However... alot of people don't know what they actually sound like and start wondering where the heck that running water faucet is. One critter we've been seeing alot lately though are scorpions... not nice!
I have a terrific habit of trying to identify anything I run into on the trail.. later... from the pictures that I took with the zoom function on my camera. LOL. One of my biggest worries is getting one of my boys or girls out there in the backcountry (or even in the frontcountry) and getting one of them snake bit. The closest I've come though is last year when hiking on a cold (thankfully) morning BoyChild plopped down on a nice trailside rock... I think I posted at one time the pictures of the beautiful Southwestern Rattler that was coiled underneath it....
