Garden Grass Snakes (also known as Garter Snakes...Thamnophissirtalis)
can
be Dangerous.
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 and screamed.
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 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 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 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.
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. His 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 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 about
to
arrest them all, when the women tried to explain how it all happened
over a
little green snake.
The police called an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and his
sobbing
wife.
The 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.
Mean while, 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 they did get the house fire out).
Time passed. Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was
repaired, the dog came home, and the police acquired a new car.
A while later they were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold
snap
for that night. The husband asked his wife if she thought they should
bring
in their plants for the night.
That's when she shot him.