20 Hair-Raising Encounters With Deadly Creatures You Won't Forget

Terrifying close encounters with bears, sharks, alligators, snakes—they used to be just fodder for blockbuster movies like Jaws and Anaconda. Now they're nightly news. (And, sure, the occasional blockbuster like Cocaine Bear.) If you think you've seen more stories lately about everyday people having scary face-to-face meetings with Mother Nature, you're not wrong. Read on to find out why. These are 20 recent real-life, hair-raising encounters with deadly creatures you won't soon forget—just be glad they're not your own. 

In May 2019, an 11-foot alligator broke into Clearwater, Florida, home in the middle of the night. Mary Wicshhusen heard a crashing noise around 3:30 am, got out of bed to investigate, and discovered the hissing gator in the middle of her kitchen. She retreated to her bedroom, closed the door, called 911, and played computer games to calm down until the authorities arrived. The gator had broken a ground-level window, slithered into the kitchen, and made a mess. "He got my red wine—the good stuff," Wicshhusen told Fox 13 Tampa. Wildlife authorities removed the gator, whose next stop was a private farm if he was deemed "a good candidate for relocation."

In March, residents of a Naples, Florida, neighborhood gathered around, watching and taking videos while a gigantic alligator crossed the street and crashed in the grass in front of a mailbox. "The gator appears to have arrived at the Forest Glen Golf & Country Club from a nearby lake, which is not uncommon at this time of year," NBC 6 reported. Florida Fish and Wildlife removed the 9- to 10-foot gator from the area without incident or injury.

In May, Florida trapper Mike Kimmel, an invasive species hunter known as the Python Cowboy, went viral after a video of him tussling with "an absolute monster" of a python in the Everglades was posted to YouTube. He pulled the snake from the swamp tail-first. Ultimately, it measured 16 feet long and weighed nearly 50 pounds. The video shows Kimmel struggling to control the snake as it hisses and lashes around, attempting to bite him. "This thing could do some serious damage out here," Kimmel says as he struggles to keep his grip. "You can see it's eaten very, very good. Opossums, otters, raccoons, alligators. I mean, nothing stands a chance against this thing."  This month, Kimmel captured a 16-foot python that was incubating 60 eggs. We'll spare you that footage.

A Florida man got the surprise of his life on March 4 when he opened his front door after hearing a noise and encountered a nine-foot-long alligator, which bit him on the leg. Scot Hollingsworth was watching TV with his wife in their Daytona Beach home when he heard a bump at the door. He opened it, and something attached to his leg and began shaking. Hollingsworth first thought it was a dog. After the animal let go of his leg, he turned on the outdoor light. "Soon as it released me I stepped back and flipped the lights on and saw the alligator sitting right here on the porch," he said. Hollingsworth was treated at a nearby hospital for minor injuries and has since recovered. A trapper called by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission found the gator and euthanized it. 

Last August, Karen Sites, 55, was on the first day of vacation with her grandchildren in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She was standing waist-deep in the water and had just told them not to be afraid of sharks when one swam up and bit her. "I felt a sharp kind of intense pain on my right arm," said Sites. "And my first thought was, 'It's anything but a shark.'" She thought the culprit was a jellyfish. "I looked down and there was a shark attached to my arm." After pushing at the shark until it let go, Sites got out of the water, and a nearby healthcare employee helped her until she could be transported to the hospital, where she received hundreds of stitches.

Last September, a 2-year-old's outdoor birthday party in Connecticut was interrupted when a bear appeared and sniffed a guest. The adults grabbed the kids and ran for the safety of the garage while the bear loped over to a picnic table and helped itself to cupcakes. The party guests honked car horns and yelled at the bear to scare it away, but the animal sat there, snacking away, while the song "Bare Necessities" from Disney's The Jungle Book played on the party's sound system.

In May, a 23-year-old man in Port Charles, Florida, was enjoying the weekend at a local bar when he was attacked by a 10-foot alligator which severed his arm. Near closing time, Jordan Rivera found the bathroom line too long, so he went out back to relieve himself and fell into the pond behind the bar. An alligator then attacked him. "Those gators, I didn't truly understand them until I woke up in the hospital and, 'Oh, gator got your arm," Rivera said from his ICU bed at Gulf Coast Medical Center. The alligator bit off his right arm just above the elbow, an injury that was nearly fatal. "They got my elbow. So, I don't have an elbow," Rivera said. "I can still move my arm around and whatnot."

Last August, video broadcast by local station WKRG showed 15 to 20 sharks swimming in waters about 450 feet from the Florida shoreline. "It's very important for people who visit Florida waters to be aware of their surroundings, understand the relative risks, and be educated on various shark issues such as behavior, biology and fisheries," the Florida Wildlife Commission's Brent Winner said. According to recent studies, sharks are spending more time closer to shore. Experts say they've adapted to the light and noise of urban areas and are potentially attracted by the carcasses of fish discarded by fishermen and businesses. 

Last September, a black bear in British Columbia, Canada, broke into a woman's car and drank dozens of cans of soda she'd left inside. Sharon Rosel said her dog's barking woke her up at 3 a.m. That's when she discovered the bear by her car, surrounded by shattered glass. Rosel owns a food truck and had bought 72 cans of soda for her business. The animal drank 69. It seemed to like Orange Crush most. "You could hear him slurping it," Rosel told CBC News. "He used his teeth every time, and they were like, snapped in half. And I could hear him drinking away. I hope he didn't cut his tongue on some of that metal."

Three amateur snake hunters made the most shocking discovery of their lives in August 2022, when they encountered a "monster" 18-foot, 104-pound Burmese python slithering across Highway 41 in Florida. "Immediately as we spotted it, we all screamed and jumped out of the car," Josh Laquis, a student at nearby Rollins College, told Fox 35. He and two friends grabbed the creature's head, body, and tail, and hoisted it into a pickup truck. It wasn't the biggest python ever captured in Florida's Everglades—that one weighed 214 pounds—but experts say it was big enough to swallow an alligator.

Last September, a 7-Eleven cashier in Olympic Valley, California, was shocked when a large brown bear ambled into his store and helped itself to junk food—again and again. Security footage captured the bear walking in the front door and heading straight to a rack of candy. As cashier Christopher Kinson watched from behind the counter, the bear returned a second and third time. After the bear's third trip, Kinson attempted to fasten the door shut with a garbage bag and a mop—and the bear is still seen trying to get in. 

In September 2022, a man in Florida survived for three days in a swamp after an alligator bit off his arm. Eric Merda was swimming in a lake when he encountered the massive reptile. "I look over and there's a gator on my right-hand side," Merda told 10 Tampa Bay. "She got my forearm." Merda said the alligator dragged him underwater three times as he tried to fight it off. Ultimately, "she took off with my arm," he said.  Merda said he walked for three days until he found a man who he asked for help. "I said a gator got my arm. He said, 'Holy smokes, man!" Merda was flown to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where doctors amputated what was left of his arm. He had some advice: "Do not feed the gators. You know who you are!" he said. "Leave them gators alone!"

Last October, four wrestling teammates from Northwest College in Wyoming were looking for antlers shed by local elk and deer when they encountered a bear in Shoshone National Forest. The bear attacked Brady Lowry, and Kendell Cummings said he jumped on the grizzly to get it off his friend. He shouted at the bear, kicking it, hitting it, and pulling its fur. "I grabbed and yanked him hard by the ear," said Cummings. Then the bear attacked him, biting his head and arms. "I could hear when his teeth would hit my skull, I could feel when he'd bite down on my bones and they'd kind of crunch." After the bear wandered off, the injured teammates called 911 and walked a mile toward help, where they were met by farmers, then emergency responders. Both were treated for minor injuries and recovered.

According to a news release by the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, Susan Lee was walking on a trail on her property last Aug. 20 with her two dogs, a Jack Russell terrier and a labradoodle. She heard a loud noise and looked up to see a black bear charging in her direction. Startled, she tripped over a stone wall and felt "pain on her upper left leg," realizing the bear had bitten her. The attack was averted when her Jack Russell started barking. The terrier's yelps startled the bear, which released Lee's leg. She and her pets were able to escape down a trail, where she called 911. A neighbor took Lee to a nearby hospital, where she was treated for minor injuries and released.

An 85-year-old Florida woman was killed by a 10-foot-long alligator near her home in March after the giant reptile lunged from a pond and dragged her into the water. Gloria Serge was walking her dog near a lake by the Spanish Lakes Fairways retirement community in Fort Pierce, Florida when the alligator emerged from the water and pulled the woman under. Carol Thomas said she looked out her window and saw the gator attacking her neighbor. "The dog was running up the hill, and I saw the alligator come out and grab her leg," said Thomas. "I said, 'Gloria swim toward the paddle boat!' She said 'I can't. The gator has me!'" Thomas then grabbed a pole and ran out to attack the gator, but when she reached the water, Serge was no longer visible.

In April 2022, an Asheville, North Carolina, couple filmed a mama bear on their porch, methodically removing a seed-filled bird feeder while her three cubs climbed the railing behind her. "Uh oh, there it goes," the homeowner says. "Taking this with me." 

In May, a central Florida couple fought off a 12-foot gator that attacked their dog when they were out for a walk. The man and woman were walking their pet in a park along the Little Econlockhatchee River when an alligator surged out of nearby water and snatched the dog. The man jumped on top of the huge reptile and pried its jaws open, freeing the pup, WFTV reported. "A boyfriend and girlfriend were walking their dog at Riverside Park in the back along the Little Econ River when an alligator came out and snatched it," city spokesperson Lisa McDonald told Fox News. "The boyfriend jumped on top of the alligator to rescue the dog. They were able to free the animal."

In May, a Hawaiian fisherman wearing a GoPro camera captured the chilling moment a tiger shark jumped out of the water and tried to take a bite out of his kayak. Fisherman Scott Haraguchi was paddling off the coast of Oahu when the huge shark bared its teeth and came at him so fast it sounded like "a boat heading towards me without a motor," he said. Somehow he managed to kick the shark away from the kayak. In the footage, he can be heard shouting, "Tiger shark! Tiger shark rammed me!" After dispatching the predator, he continued fishing. Haraguchi said it's possible the shark thought his kayak was a seal.

In 1985, drug smuggler Andrew Thornton was transporting cocaine from Colombia to the US. He dropped packages from a private plane over Georgia before jumping after them. Unfortunately, he got tangled up in the parachute and fell to his death. Soon after, a 176-pound black bear was found dead in Georgia's Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. Scattered around its body were 40 opened plastic containers that bore traces of cocaine. The bear had apparently OD'd on the part of Thornton's stash. Dr. Kenneth Alonso, the state's chief medical examiner, performed a necropsy in December 1985. He determined the bear had absorbed three or four grams of cocaine into its bloodstream, although it may have consumed more.  After being stuffed by a taxidermist, the bear was displayed in the visitor center of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. In the early '90s, it was put in storage and was acquired by country music singer Waylon Jennings, who reportedly gave it to a friend in Las Vegas. After Jennings died, the bear ended up in a traditional Chinese medicine store before making it to the Kentucky Fun Mall gift shop in Lexington, where it sits today. 

Last December, a heroic dog in South Africa was able to alert its owner to the presence of a deadly black mamba living under his couch. The dog's owner wondered why his beloved Rottweiler kept pushing him away from the couch over two days. "[The owner] moved the couch, and there was a Black Mamba!" snake rescuer and conservationist Nick Evans wrote in a Facebook post. The Rottweiler tried to attack it, but his owner quickly grabbed him and took him outside. Evans was called to remove the snake, which was just over seven feet long. He described it as a "quick and easy catch." "The way this gentleman in Escombe reacted was exactly how one should react if a snake is encountered and if you have dogs," he wrote. "Never let your dog out to kill a snake for you, it often ends badly for the dog too."