Slow Worm (Anguis fragilis)

Beautiful reptile.
Sadly it's often being mistaken by people for a snake and killed.

Be mistaked with a snake never can be in no way a reason for kill it. Those kind of people should be transformed into snakes ((

In Russia, many people kill snakes, even Natrix natrix with distinctive yellow spots - just because of being a snake (thinking all other species to be venomous).
For example, dice snakes are called by local people 'water vipers' or 'chess snakes', and their bite kills in 5 minutes!!!

These things happens everywhere - overall in villages or rural zones. Both the killing of beautiful cute snakes (venomous or not, this never could be a reason for that), as the mythical ridiculous legends about them, and the people are VERY sure of what they talk even when the contrary facts are shown in front of their eyes. For example, I was curious about a sound that I heard at summer nights and my partner told me very sure that was the breeding song of the Montpellier snake. After that I learked that snakes can't produce sound (except the hissing). (The sound resulted to be from red-necked nightjar)
Or another example, the snake with long hair that can kill you inmediatly. A man told that to my father when he handled a Natrix natrix. And he was seeing perfectly a hairless snake in front of him, and telling "this is the long-haired one, kill it!"

Villagers are often ignorant despite being close to nature, and everything that is not their livestock deserves destruction, for being useless, boring or harmful - whenever it's true.
City dwellers may be more educated at times.
Some superstitions from Russia:
Bumblebees & carpenter bees raid hives; also they're drones;
Toads eat strawberry at night;
Every raptor eats chickens;
Owls & bats bring bad luck and must be driven away if settle in your house;
Every bat drinks blood and tangles in your hair on purpose;
Mammoth wasp (Megascolia maculata) is a deadly mutant hornet;
Grasshoppers are locust (=pests), the larger the nastier (like Tettigonia or Decticus sp);
Horsehair worm (Gordius) will get under your skin and kill you;
Taspole shrimp is a prehistoric mutant WTF;
Moles are pests, they eat beetroot & potato;
Crane-flies are the malaria mosquitoes;
Wolf-spiders have deadly venom;
etc...

Sad to admit that above-mentioned animals are killed 'for good' very, very often.