I came home to the 19th-floor condo in which I lived at the time (in the 1980's) to find my new 100-gallon aquarium had split a seam and lost about 80 gallons of water...which had somehow vanished. The wood parquet was damp, no standing water...everything had found its way through some gap or crack in the poured concrete. Never heard a word from neighbours or from management; that water just seemed to disappear. I still have mental images of somebody in that building drilling a hole in their ceiling to hang a plant hook and having 80-gallons of water come pouring mysteriously out...
And, in the 90's, one of my favourite fish was a large-ish electric catfish, maybe around 12-14 inches. He spent all his time sitting like a giant inert lump of snot in his 120-gallon home, rarely moved unless to feed, but I had owned him (her?) for years and I liked him. One day I was working in the tank, as I often had in the past, but I got careless and cocky and didn't keep watch. He moved towards me and gave me a little love-zap...which so startled me that I involuntarily yanked my arm back and out of the tank, smashing my arm on the tank stand, chipping a bone in my elbow, shattering a glass cover leaning there and slicing my arm to the tune of over a dozen stitches. Not so much scary, more of a reminder to stay alert and to avoid complacency.
The scariest? No contest: I once received a phone call from my wife telling me that she had found a snake that had escaped its container and was loose in the house. This had happened a few times in the past, and the escapee had always been a hatchling kingsnake or cornsnake (I used to breed snakes). A small, colourful, docile 15-inch snake did not phase my wife; but this time the fugitive was an adult bullsnake, well over 6 feet in length, coiled on the floor in the centre of the living room, hissing and striking as only a bullsnake can. She discovered it while vacuuming...in the nude!
The scary part was coming home that day...
