Garden Grass
Snakes, also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) can
be dangerous and even deadly. Yes, grass
snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's
why.
A couple, up on the Sweetwater, 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 and 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
naked out into the living room to
see what the problem was. His wife 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 on the behind. He
thought the snake had bitten him, so he
screamed and fell over on the
floor.
His wife thought he had a heart attack, so
she covered him up, told him to
lie still and called an ambulance
The attendants rushed in, wouldn't listen to
his protests and 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 in four places, for which he was eventually taken
to the hospital.
The wife still had the problem of the snake
in the house, so she called on
a neighbor man. He 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 more than a dozen 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 he
had been bitten by the snake. 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.
They saw the unconscious man, smelled the
whiskey, and assumed that a
drunken fight had occurred. They were in the
process of arresting them all, when the women tried to explain how it all
happened over a little green snake and the little snake again crawled out from
under the sofa. 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 and
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, the burning drapes, were seen by
the neighbors who called the
fire department. The firemen had started
raising the fire truck ladder
when they were halfway down the street.
The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires
and put out the electricity
and disconnected the telephones in a
ten-square city block area (but t hey
did get the house fire out).
Time passed... Both men were discharged from
the hospital, the house was
repaired, insurance replaced the couch and
curtains, 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.
That's when he shot her.