Never bring plants into the house
> Garden Grass Snakes (also known as Garter Snakes.. Thamnophis sirtalis)
> 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 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 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.
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 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 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 lames, 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 firetruck 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, 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 husband asked his wife if she thought they
> should bring in their plants for the night.
> That's when she shot him.