Might not be poisonous but reptiles can have all sorts of nasty bacteria in their mouths that I'd rather not be bitten with, and the teeth on a snake that size would be plenty long enough to break the skin (speaking from experience on that one.) So not sissy - experienced & educated.

With the glove I could give it a little leeway and have some range of motion with its head which helps keep it calm, and I kept repositioning it so it didn't have enough range of motion to bite me behind the end of the glove. If I had it pinned by the back of the head the whole time (as you may have seen on one of those snake hunter TV shows) it would have been much more stressed and there was no need for that if it would behave with just the glove on.