Garden Snakes can Be Deadly
Garden Grass 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 on the behind. He thought the
snake ha d 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 green 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.
