'cause they're garter snakes dude. Non-aggressive. It'd be like if you got a dirt daubber and tried to train it to sting people.

grasshoppers are fearsome.

1) they can get pretty big
2) their death throes are very thrashy. when catching and killing bugs in biology, we were instructed to catch grasshoppers separately because they would tear up things like moths and butterflies by thrashing around as they died. It's really kinda scary.