Stupid to the Nth power

I wanted to share this picture with you because it represents the stupidest thing I've ever done in photography. This is a Gabon viper. It is very deadly, and when I photographed it in captivity -- on the carpeted bedroom floor of the young man who owned it -- it's nose was 12 inches from my tennis shoes. The owner's passion in life is venomous snakes, and he has some of the world's deadliest species in terrariums (terraria is correct, actually) in his walk-in closest. He agreed to take the Gabon viper out but only in his bedroom lest it escape and kill someone (really). I photographed this in the 90's with my medium format Mamiya camera pointing straight down on the snake, trying to keep my toes as far away as possible. Every time the reptile moved toward my shoes, the young man would gently move it away using a long rod with a hook on the end of it. So, when I got home and went online to read about the viper, I came upon an article featuring a lady who coincidentally lived 10 minutes away from where I used to live in California. She worked at the zoo and kept a Gabon viper. The article went on to say that it bit her, and she called 911 and wrote on a piece of paper for the paramedics, "Northridge hospital quick". And then she died. It's a beautiful snake, but what I did was really, really stupid. I replaced the background in Photoshop using the pen tool to precisely select the snake. The background is a shot from Deadvlei in Namibia.