Thanks for all the great advice. I finally got around to handling my garter today. Despite some of your advice I did use gloves at first to get him out of the cage. But I quickly ditched them when I noticed no threatening behavior.

It was a surprisingly calm and clean experience. I expected the same kind of quick jumpy reactions as I see when reaching in to the terrarium to replace the water dish. However, he actually completely calmed down once I had him in my hands and was even content to just sit in my hands looking around at times. Oh and thankfully there were no stinky fluids involved. I now feel pretty silly for being nervous about it in the first place.