One thing I’ve learned in all my years as an outdoors writer is that you can’t go wrong writing about snakes.

Whether people love them or hate them, everyone seems to be fascinated by them - and for that reason, stories like the one I published May 11 are always well-read.

Personally, I hate snakes - and I have for a very long time.

I know they’re good for the ecosystem, and they play a positive role for the environment. But I get shaky at the mere thought of snakes because of several incidents that took place when I was a child.

When I was seven or eight years old, my grandfather used to let me swim in the Cahaba River that flows through the heart of Birmingham, Ala. We also did some trotline fishing for catfish on the river, and one night he put out a minnow trap to catch small fish for catfish bait in the same spot where I had always swam.

When we came back the next morning, the trap was filled with small bluegill. But it was also holding a giant banded water snake.

The snake had swam into the trap and swallowed one of the bluegill whole. But with the big lump in its mid-section, it couldn’t get back out of the trap and it drowned.

Needless to say, that was the last time I swam in that spot - and that incident was the source of many snake-related nightmares.

A few years laters when I was about 10 or 12, I went blackberry picking with my grandfather. Snakes were a common occurrence on blackberry-picking trips because they like to sit near the bushes and catch birds that come to eat the berries.

On our way to the blackberry bushes one day, we encountered a snake so big that it stretched completely across the dirt road we were riding on. It had to be at least 10 to 12 feet long, and I’ll always believe it was someone’s pet python or boa constrictor that they had just released into the woods.

My grandfather ran over it with his Volkswagen, and the snake didn’t even slow down. When we rolled over the giant reptile, it was like rolling over a concrete speed bump. But the snake kept going. It crossed the road, crawled into the woods and disappeared. Even four tires and the weight of a car weren’t enough to stop it.

I demanded that my grandfather take me home right then - and now, more than 20 years later, I never take a bite of blackberry cobbler without thinking of the incident.

Like I said, I know snakes serve a purpose. I would never kill one just for the sake of killing it.

But every time I see one, I get chills.

Even as a seasoned outdoorsman, they are one of my greatest fears.

They have been for a long time - and they probably always will be.