What's the scariest wild animal you've encountered and not through like a tour or zoo, but just you and it with no strings attached. A couple weeks ago, I visited my girlfriend's house which is out in the country and while we were sitting on the floor eating, a wild scorpion walked right by on the carpet. I admit, I got freaked out, but she just laughed because apparently she's seen lots of scorpions in the country . I'm glad I've never encountered any of those big spiders like clock spider... Spoiler
Scorpion sounds about right. In rural Austin, at my grandparents, there were quite a few, sometimes getting into the house.
i've been stung by them twice. not a lot of fun. but snakes scare the crap out of me, and we had copperheads around our yard way too often as a kid growing up.
At my old house, there was a family of possums living under my backyard deck. Every night, momma possum would go out hunting for food. I had a sliding glass door in my bedroom and that mofo would walk by every night and look right in at me. Thing was HUGE, too. I would guess about 20 pounds. Used to scare the crap out of me. A few times, literally... This year, the wife and I were in Kingwood watching 4th of July fireworks. On the way back to the car, we heard something drop out of a tree. I looked down and it was a SNAKE. Not a little grass snake either. Whatever it was, it was about 2 feet long. The thing literally fell about 5 feet away from where I was walking. If it would've fallen on me, I probably would've died from a heart attack.
i came across a rattlesnake behind my book case a few months ago. I've got pics at home. Will post later. Damn, I can't believe i never posted that story.
Snakes bother me too, but at least I see them if they are in my backyard. My step-dad got stung by a scorpion while they were asleep in bed. I would have been calling 911 scared out of my mind. They went online and found out that it wasn't deadly to humans(for the scorpions native to the area), so he went back to bed after making sure there weren't anymore.
I wouldn't say this is the scariest per se, but a few years ago I was a camp counselor. As I was walking back to my cabin late at night, a skunk just strolled into the path I was walking on about 2 feet in front of me, then stopped and stared at me. About 10 tense seconds later, it walked off. I'm sure I've encountered more potentially dangerous animals, but man oh man, did my heart skip a beat when I saw that thing so close to me.
I'd have to go with snake (rattlesnake or cottonmouth) as the scariest I've encountered. Bark Scorpions Spoiler are all too common in the Austin area and while they freaked me out as a kid, I've just gotten accustomed to finding them... everywhere. I did stumble on an opossum in a garage cabinet many years ago, and I'm not sure who was more scared.... but let's just say I didn't expect to find a giant mutant rat showing his teeth and hissing at me when I went for the bucket of paint. I'm thinking that anyone with a bear or shark story is the winner.
A cottonmouth chased me once as a kid. I saw it coming in a ditch I was playing in (swimming towards me), and it came right up on land, really fast, coming after me, but I got on my bike quickly enough and got away. As an adult, probably an agressive black bear at night in a remote part of Yosemite was the scariest, just because we were unarmed hippies and this bear was clearly very hungry. We stayed up all night with the fire and banging pots and pans over and over. he would occasionally get close, and even when he moved off, we could see the campfire reflected in his eyes all night. I felt bad for him too, but mainly was kind of scared. A wild russian boar (west texas mainly) is pretty scary, but I've never come across one that wasn't caught in a trap. I did find a skull of one once, with a big bullet mashed into a pancake on its forehead -- the skull wasn't even fractured.
Apparently nothing very scary. A big-ass dog? I came across and almost stepped on a fairly large snake, but I don't know if it was poisonous or not. Armadillo -- those things carry leprosy.
Now you can laugh at all your fancy science friends who tell you that snakes will just leave you alone if you leave them alone you're not the first person i know who has been chased by a water moccasin.
