Green garden grass snakes can be dangerous. Yes, grass snakes,

not rattlesnakes.

A couple in Sweetwater, Texas had a lot of potted plants,

and 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 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 rear. He thought the snake had bitten him and he fainted.

His wife thought he had a heart attack, so she called

an ambulance.

The attendants rushed in and loaded him on the stretcher

and started carrying him out.

About that time the snake came out from under the sofa

and one of the Emergency Medical Technicians 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.

But in relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushion

where she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed

and fainted, the snake rushed back under the sofa, and

the neighbor man, seeing her laying 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 on 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.

An ambulance was again called when it was determined

that the injury required hospitalization.

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 he had been bitten by the snake. She

went to the kitchen, brought back 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 two women tried to

explain how it all happened over a little green snake.

The ambulance arrived and took away the neighbor and his

sobbing wife. Just then the little snake crawled out from

under the couch. One of the policemen drew his gun and fired

at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg of the end table

that was on one side of the sofa. 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 up and raced out into the street,

where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into

the parked police car and set it on fire.

Meanwhile, the burning drapes had spread to the walls

and the entire house was blazing.

Neighbors had called the fire department and the arriving

fire truck had started raising his ladder when they were

halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the

overhead wires and pulled out the electricity and disconnected

telephones in a ten-square city block area.

Time passed...

Both men were discharged from the hospital. The house was

rebuilt. The police acquired a new car, and all was right

with the world.

About a year later the original couple 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.

She shot him.