In Canada the only thing to fear in a lake is the dreaded shrink-dink.
Yeah, it was a bit of a shock moving from Western New York (which is Canada basically) to Central Texas.
We've got gators in Texas and I did not know that before I moved here, we don't see them much in this part of Texas but once in a while a Texas Parks and Wildlife employee will have to move one out of some body of water.
When we bought our house here, we spent a month finding scorpions running across floors about every other day, thought their sting could kill us, reality is more like a wasp sting.
We get big honking tarantulas on the outside of the house occasionally, the wolf spiders are big and creepy, we've got black widows and brown recluse as well.
Rattlesnakes occasionally turn up in the yard or in the garage and some of them have been pretty large.
One morning I opened my back door in the kitchen and a small two foot long rattlesnake fell into my kitchen! ..that will wake you up.
Coyotes pass along my back fence almost every day for all the years I've lived here, we see them all the time, I live in a suburban neighborhood but the coyotes keep doing what they've always done, if you leave domestic cats outside at night they will be taken, sometimes they will grab a small dog as well.
Lots of hawks and falcons, we even have eagles out by one of the lakes near here, lots of big azz turkey buzzards cleaning up any road kill.
We have bobcats here for sure but I've never seen one, we also have mountain lions in this area now, that's a new thing apparently.
Most native plants in Texas will bite you as well, there are thorns or points that will stick you on tons of plants here, but there are wildflowers everywhere as well.
I like all the plant and animal wildlife here, it is much more interesting than New York.
All that potentially dangerous stuff here and the only thing that has bitten/stung me is a scorpion....and a few jellyfish in Corpus Christi.
.....and those damn fire ants, I hate them.
