This isn’t a Garter snake but a darn good meal.

Lifes Little Traumas

Garden Grass Snakes also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) canbe dangerous. Yes, garter 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 toprotect them from a possible freeze.It turned out that a little green garter snake was hidden in one ofthe plants. When it had warmed up, it slithered out and the wife saw it gounder the sofa.

She let out a very loud scream.The husband (who was taking a shower) ran out into the living room nakedto 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 thattime the family dog came and cold-nosed him on the behind. He thought thesnake 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, toldhim to lie still and called an ambulance.

The attendants rushed in, would not listen to his protests, loaded him onthe stretcher, and started carrying him out.About that time, the snake came out from under the sofa and theEmergency Medical Technician saw it and dropped his end of thestretcher. That's when the man broke his leg and why he is still in thehospital.

The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called ona neighbor who volunteered to capture the snake. He armed himself with arolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch. Soon he decided itwas gone and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief.But while relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where shefelt 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 torevive her.The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at the grocerystore, saw her husband's mouth on the woman's mouth and slammed herhusband in the back of the head with a bag of canned goods, knocking himout and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed stitches.

The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her neighborlying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed that thesnake had bitten him. She went to the kitchen and got a small bottle ofwhiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat.By now, the police had arrived. Breath here......They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that adrunken fight had occurred.

They were about to arrest them all, when thewomen tried to explain how it all happened over a little green snake.The police called an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and hissobbing wife.Now, the little snake again crawled out from under the sofa and one of thepolicemen drew his gun and fired at it.

He missed the snake and hit theleg 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 thewindow into the yard on top of the family dog who, startled, jumped outand raced into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it andsmashed into the parked police car.

Meanwhile, neighbors saw the burning drapes and called in the firedepartment. The firemen had started raising the fire ladder when they werehalfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires,put out the power, and disconnected the telephones in aten-square city block area (but they did get the house fire out).

Time passed! Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house wasrepaired, the dog came home, the police acquired a new car and all wasright with their world.A while later they were watching TV and the weatherman announced a coldsnap for that night. The wife asked her husband if he thought they shouldbring in their plants for the night.And that's when he left her