[pyrnet] Not pyr related but really worth reading

[Christine <greatpyrenees@att.net>]

This was posted on the Venom list.
Subject:         Green Garden Grass snakes can be dangerous

ALWAYS THOUGHT GREEN SNAKES WERE OK? READ ON........

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 leg. 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 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 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 cushions, 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 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. An
ambulance was again called and 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. They called an ambulance, which 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 as 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.
Time passed -----------------
Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was re-built, the
police acquired a new car, and all was right with their world.
About a year 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.
She shot him.