River Rat...
I discovered Puff Adders as a teenager while out riding my horse. I thought some nutcase had lost his "pet" Cobra!! I was so relieved to find out it was native and non-poisonous.
Another black panther story. My brother and his family lived on the edge of the Big Thicket in East Texas for several years on an old farm. They had lots of wildlife adventures, mostly unpleasant. They heard the screaming woman several different nights. One night they were coming home from somewhere and a black panther walked right in front of their car in their driveway. It had just walked right past their porch and didn't seem at all concerned about their moving car. They had to brake for it. They finally gave up on that place and moved back to civilization.
We had a little bug problem when we first moved in to this house. We were sleeping on an air mattress at the time. One night when hubby was out of town I woke up because something was crawling up the top of my head and onto my forehead. I very sleepily reached up, picked it off of my forehead and threw it. Then wondered what bug feels like a stick? I thought of a walking stick, a praying mantis...surely I didn't just pick up scorpion by the tail off of my forehead. That's just too creepy to contemplate. I turned on the light and there was a scorpion on hubby's pillow.
Yes. A scorpion was on my forehead and I managed to grab it right under the stinger. *shudder*
Boy, did we go round and round that bedroom! It kept getting under the air mattress and it took both of my hands to throw the mattress as best I could, and before I could grab something to kill it with, it would dart back under the mattress. I finally won. And moved into the living room.
I've never been fond of scorpions, they've always kind of made my stomach roll, but now I have a much stronger aversion to them. And I had some trouble sleeping for awhile. You know when you lay down and the hairs on the top of your head succumb to gravity one by one? That's EXACTLY what it feels like when a scorpion crawls up your head.
About a week later I was washing dishes and felt something on the high side of my ankle. It was a scorpion. I was surprised it got so far up my leg before I felt it. Now before the forehead incident I would have calmly taken a plate or something and flicked it off of my leg before killing it. But oh, no. I just wasn't capable of that anymore. I had an all out shrieking, foot stomping, dancing around hissy fit. I thought it would run, but it just slowly slid my leg a little further with every stomp. Seemed to take forever.
It turned out one of our air ducts wasn't quite sealed. Once that got fixed, no more scorpions. I'm sitting here thinking summer is coming. Canada is looking good.
