Garter Snakes can be Dangerous

Snakes known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) can be dangerous.
Yes, grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's why.

A couple in Sutton , Ontario , 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
lyi ing 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