lived in the carolina's for probably 30 of 40+ years on this earth.
spiders and snakes aren't that bad at all. i've got 40 acres and i have yet to see a copperhead in 12 years of living on this property. i've run into them them quite a bit, tho, but they aren't that big of a deal because they are pretty laid back snakes. i've rolled logs over several times startling one and all it did was take off. i've had people i was hiking with step over one accidentally and although startling, it was uneventful. now water moccasins, those are scary. i've seen several in my pond before, but even then all but two of them took off and the other two got shot. unless you are in the eastern part of the states, those are kind of rare. i'm in the northwest part of NC currently and it wasn't until last year that i saw any at all.
my 6 year old daughter will go for a walk around the pond by herself occassionally and i'm not worried. we go camping quite a bit and have gone to sleeping in hammocks when we do camp and spiders and snakes just aren't something that my wife and i are all that concerned with. it's kind of like living in arkansas or some other place with tornados (which i was in arkansas going to school for 6 years). from the outside you hear about tornados quite a bit and you get this impression that they are going on all the time everywhere, but the truth is that it isn't something you have to deal with a whole lot ever.