*GARDEN SNAKES CAN BE
DANGEROUS...*
Snakes also
known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) can be
dangerous.
Yes, grass snakes, not
rattlesnakes. Here's why.
A couple
in Sweetwater, Texas, had a lot of
potted plants. During a
recent cold spell, the wife was
bringing a lot of them indoors to protect
them from a possible
freeze.
It turned out that a little
green garden grass snake was hidden in one
of
the plants. When it had warmed
up, it slithered out and the wife saw it go
under the sofa.
She let out a very loud
scream.
The husband (who was taking a
shower) ran out into the living room naked
to
see what the problem was. She
told him there was a snake under the sofa.
He got down on the floor on his
hands and knees to look for it. About that
time the family dog came and
cold-nosed him in his behind. He thought
the
snake had bitten him, so he
screamed and fell over on the floor.
His wife thought he had had a
heart attack, so she covered him up, told
him
to lie still and called an
ambulance.
The attendants rushed in, would
not listen to his protests, loaded him on
the stretcher, and started
carrying him out.
About that time, the snake came
out from under the sofa and the Emergency
Medical Technician saw it and
dropped his end of the stretcher. That's
when
the man broke his leg and why he
is still in the hospital.
The wife still had the problem
of the snake in the house, so she called on
a
neighbor who volunteered to
capture the snake. He armed himself with a
rolled-up newspaper and began
poking under the couch.. Soon he decided it
was gone and told the woman, who
sat down on the sofa in relief.
But while relaxing, her hand
dangled in between the cushions, where she
felt
the snake wriggling around. She
screamed and fainted, the snake rushed back
under the sofa.
The neighbor man, seeing her
lying there passed out, tried to use CPR to
revive her.
The neighbor's wife, who had
just returned from shopping at the grocery
store, saw her husband's mouth
on the woman's mouth and slammed her
husband
in the back of the head with a
bag of canned goods, knocking him out and
cutting his scalp to a point
where it needed stitches.
The noise woke the woman from
her dead faint and she saw her neighbor
lying
on the floor with his wife
bending over him, so she assumed that the
snake
had bitten him. She went to the
kitchen and got a small bottle of whiskey,
and began pouring it down the
man's throat.
By now, the police had
arrived.
Breathe here...
They saw the unconscious man,
smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a
drunken fight had occurred. They
were about to arrest them all, when the
women tried to explain how it
all happened over a little garden snake!
The police called an ambulance,
which took away the neighbor and his
sobbing
wife.
Now, the little snake again
crawled out from under the sofa and one of
the
policemen drew his gun and fired
at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg
of the end table. The table fell
over, the lamp on it shattered and, as the
bulb broke, it started a fire in
the drapes.
The other policeman tried to
beat out the flames, and fell through the
window into the yard on top of
the family dog who, startled, jumped out
and
raced into the street, where an
oncoming car swerved to avoid it and
smashed
into the parked police
car.
Meanwhile, neighbors saw the
burning drapes and called in the fire
department. The firemen had
started raising the fire ladder when they
were
halfway down the street. The
rising ladder tore out the overhead wires,
put
out the power, and disconnected
the telephones in a ten-square city block
area (but they did get the house
fire out).
Time passed! Both men were
discharged from the hospital, the house was
repaired, the dog came home, the
police acquired a new car and all was right
with their world.
A while later they were watching
TV and the weatherman announced a cold snap
for that night. The wife asked
her husband if he thought they should bring
in their plants for the
night.
And that's when he shot
her.*
*P.S. Its been a
long time since I laughed this hard about an
email...*