HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - It's perhaps impossible to say that the number of snakes is on the rise but one Alabama wildlife official said there has been an increase in reported snake sightings.

Keith Hudson, a snake expert for the Alabama Department of Conservation and Resources, also said that late summer and fall is typically the time of year when snakes give birth and breed.

A Huntsville couple took a video of two timber rattlesnakes alongside Cecil Ashburn Drive on Saturday that were believed to be mating. That video was taken two weeks after the severed head of a copperhead bit its body in Huntsville.

"I think maybe perhaps a few more this year," Hudson said of the number of snakes this summer. "You never know because is it just getting more reports from people and not necessarily more snakes being seen. I've had a lot of reports of snakes this year."

Hudson cited Robert Mount's "Reptiles and Amphibians of Alabama" - a book Hudson described as "the bible" of snake information - as saying that snakes commonly reproduce and breed in the late summer and fall.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 7-8,000 bites from poisonous snakes are reported each year nationwide. Of that number, an average of 5 die, the CDC said. Both the CDC and Hudson said that bites from a poisonous snake don't always result in the poisonous venom being injected.

Hudson said the best way to avoid getting bit by a snake is to simply leave the snake alone. Bites from accidentally stepping on or near a snake are in the minority, he said.

"Most people are bitten by a snake when they mess with it, when they try to pick it up or handle it or catch it or put it in a box or kill it," he said. "The vast majority of the bites come from messing with the snake rather than the snake coming after the people. They will avoid you almost always if you'll just leave them alone."