Shawn Davis told Channel 2's Tom Regan she spotted one slithering down her hallway and another in a fruit bowl.

"The first was a baby copperhead; the second was a rat snake. My husband said since the last two snakes, he found two more. But he didn't want to tell me about it, cause I'm a nervous wreck," Davis said.

Residents first contacted Channel 2 Action News about the problem in September. They reported sightings of a half-dozen snakes, including a six-foot-long copperhead that was trapped in an apartment breezeway and killed.

Davis and her husband, Paul Patterson, said they repeatedly reported their concerns to management and requested moving into another building but were told that was not possible.

Earlier this week, they filed a lawsuit accusing apartment management of negligence in failing to control the population of venomous snakes. The suit seeks unspecified damages.

As much as 99 percent of Haiti has been deforested over the past few decades, as the country’s desperate people have cut down trees to make way for agriculture or charcoal production. This massive habitat loss has put the entire nation’s biodiversity at risk. Only a few untouched habitats remain.

The La Hotte land frog’s habitat is one of those areas. "It’s a very beautiful forest," (Carlos) Martinez (Rivera, amphibian conservation biologist with the Philadelphia Zoo,) says. "There are a lot of tree ferns, pines and magnolia trees. It feels like going to any other tropical rainforest. But it’s a very tiny patch of forest." The trees are still being cut down to produce charcoal or to clear land for cash crops such as parsley, celery, broccoli and carrots.

With so much of the country already deforested and more trees likely to be lost in the coming years, the Philadelphia Zoo in 2010 set out to save some of Haiti’s endemic frogs that live in those fading forests. They captured 154 frogs from nine species and brought them back to Philadelphia to establish a captive breeding program. "You can protect wildlife like frogs in a small space," says the zoo’s chief operating officer, Andy Baker. "Trying to keep a genetically viable population of tigers takes the entire global zoo community, whereas in a relatively small room you can hold a genetically and demographically viable population of an entire species of frog. Our return on investment on species protection for animals like reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates can be very high."

It was the first time the invasive species was found in eastern Oregon, according to Rick Boatner of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The species is native to the southeastern United States, Boatner said. It can grow to 250 lbs.

"I'd hate to see these turtles get established in Oregon," Boatner said. "We already have problems in the Willamette Valley with common snapping turtles."

He added that the alligator snapping turtle can be very aggressive, and it's a safety hazard to people.

"It has quite a bite," he said.

Valeh Levy shot video Friday New Smyrna Beach but said her son was one of the first surfers to spot the snake in the waves.

"My son came running up toward my minivan and he said, 'Mommy, you're not going to believe this but there's a rattlesnake in the surf,'" Levy said.

Witnesses estimate it was 4-5 feet long and came onto the beach from the ocean. Levy said her son described how surfers tried to avoid the snake swimming right by them.

"He said the coolest part was that the snake raised half of its body up and looked out towards the surf and a wave was coming and the snake turned towards the beach and kind of let the wave bump it on in," Levy said.

Experts said it isn't common to see a rattlesnake in the ocean, but Smyrna Dunes Park near where the one was spotted is a natural habitat for them where they eat rats, small rabbits, and even baby raccoons.

We’re not born with a fear of snakes, but it sure seems to develop early.

Now scientists may be closer to a explaining why ophidiophobia ranks among the top fears of humans, and seems to be shared with other primates.

Researchers inserted probes into the brains of Japanese macacques and found that neurons in a part of their brain that controls visual attention were more strongly and quickly activated in response to images of snakes, versus other objects.

The results, published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, appear to support a theory that early primates developed advanced perception as an evolutionary response to being prey, not as an adaptation that may have made foraging or hunting easier.

That alligator gator stretched 11 feet, 6 inches and may have hatched when Richard Nixon was president, said Phil Walters, the licensed trapper called out Wednesday afternoon to corral and kill the beast behind the Rivertree Landing Apartments off Sligh Avenue, east of 56th Street.

The back of the complex borders a scenic stretch of the Hillsborough River just south of Temple Terrace.

“We had heard that a couple of people had caught and tied the gator to a tree,” Walters said.

That was indeed the case. A stretch of parachute cord stretched from a tree over a 4-foot seawall and into the river, where the gator floated at the other end of the line.

Walters said some residents told law enforcement that unidentified people “had caught it and was feeding it cats,” keeping it as a backyard pet of sorts.

Whether the cat diet rumor is true or not, Walters was unsure. He does note that it’s a bad idea to feed an alligator anything because the free food makes the reptiles lose their fear of humans and associate people on the shore with getting a snack.