I don't have any shark stories (except maybe a snow shark or two
). Too far inland.
Snake stories, on the other hand....
Many moons ago my mother lived in what was once considered a rural part of the county (small neighborhood with a few farms around). As she was raking leaves one fall day - without her shoes on - a black snake went slithering across her feet! She didn't stick around long enough to identify what kind of snake it was.
My uncle once told me of a time when he was in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in Thailand (Vietnam War era). He was riding in a jeep with a couple of other GI's on their way back to the base when they see this dark shape in the road ahead. They slow down, and the thing rises up about 6 feet off the ground. Turns out, it was a king cobra. From where they stopped - a good 30-40 feet away - the hood appeared to be about a foot or so across, and the body still on the ground was at least 10 feet long. After waiting a couple of minutes and honking the horn a few times, they realized the snake wasn't going to back down. They then backed the jeep up and took another road back to the base.
My brother was doing some service work at what was then the new Scout camp (about an hour south of Louisville, KY) in the late 1980's, riding along the service road in the maintenance truck when they ran over what they thought was a large tree branch. The driver backed up, bumped over it, then pulled forward and bumped over it again. They then got out and discovered the "branch" was actually a timber rattler, about 10 feet long (when they laid it in the back of the truck, the body ran along one side of the 6-foot bed and across the end).
At Scout summer camp in 1999 (the same camp mentioned above), we had a 5-foot long copperhead come into the campsite one evening and start moving around the boys' tents. Now, technically, the Scout Reservation as a whole is a nature preserve, so we're supposed to report snakes in campsites to the Nature Lodge so one of the staff can come capture & relocate the snakes. This snake particular was being a little aggressive, so one of the other adult leaders with me took an axe to it and reported the snake later. I think he got fined for 'killing wildlife in a nature preserve', but it was that or risk one of the boys being bitten while we waited 1/2 hour or more for the staff to get there.
A third Scout-related summer camp story involves a young man (not me) in Southern Indiana walking along a trail next to the Blue River when a copperhead slithered across the trail directly in front of him towards the river. We heard his scream about 1/4 mile away!
Another Scout story occurred at Big South Fork National Park in southern Kentucky in 1998. We were walking along a trail and the two Scouts in front of me (about 15-20 feet) stepped right across a copperhead - they could have stepped
on it for all I know! All I know is I saw it moving once they were a couple of steps beyond it. I stopped where I was and watched as the snake slithered off into the undergrowth at the side of the trail. I called out to remind them to keep their eyes open since they were the ones at the head of the line.
A couple of years ago I was hiking with some Scouts in the Jefferson Memorial Forest (our local nature preserve) and saw the back end of a large snake (about 2-3 inch diameter) as it slithered into a large pile of debris - downed trees and logs that were pile near the trail. Not sure if it was a rattler (which do live in that part of the county - the ranger has documented at least a dozen or so) or just a rat snake.
Another time I was walking along a trail - I don't recall where or when this was - and saw a rattlesnake sunning itself on a stump. I stayed well clear and didn't agitate the critter, so I didn't hear its rattle, but I did see it.
That's all the stories I can recall at the moment.
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