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"Do you ever run across these things?"

My answer is "probably". Why "probably"?

Consider that such a snake is a biological mine field. A snake lays in wait for something to approach within a few feet so that the snake can bite it and thus obtain physical control of the prey animal.

Once such a hold upon the prey animal is obtained, the snake wraps coil after coil of snake around the prey to constrict breathing and so cause death.

It may interest you (and most certainly does interest me) that the smaller gators in my pond are all gone, as are the fish.

A snake trap is about to appear in my pond. Lots of verrrrrryy long steaks are expected in the future.

But as to your question of have I seen one, - not yet.

Are they nearby - most certainly.

Are they a risk to people? Children, more so than adults. But that will not bother ParcMan and his/her/its fellow travelers in the NGO crowd.

Here in the Swamp of Socialism, ParcMan's "endangered Florida Panther" (neither 'endangered, not specific to Florida - just a Texas varmint) the population explosion of such cats resulted in the de facto closure of the ParcPerson's "school" a couple of miles from my place.

The mothers weren't willing to risk their children having a "close encounter of the terminal kind" thanks to a panther. And they didn't seem at all impressed with the glib assurances offered by ParcPersons like Lil' Debbie, the Fat 'Crat from US Fish & WIldlife, ad nauseam.

Try googling articles by Jan Michael Jacobson particularly "The Gift That Eats People" if the issue of dangerous animals and government interests you.

Count on another "Invasive Species Control" bureaucracy being set up to 'manage the problem'. This means, when translated from agency baffle-gab to American English, that we will set up a whole new bureaucracy to deal with this problem.

I will deal with it with traps and a gun. Historically, that is what Americans did. They didn't wait for some goober from some gooberment agency to "solve their problem" for them.

Which, as the cat proves, will always be too late. That's why the cat is just a lump in a snake. Which is what I would be, and my fellow land owners, if the Lil Debbies of the world had their way.

They won't. Bet on it.

;-)