Don't bring in the plants.

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 on the 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.