Is this a true story?

You never know with Americans. ;-)


"Janet Bostwick" > wrote in message
...
> Garden Grass Snakes (also known as Garter Snakes...Thamnophissirtalis)
> can
> be Dangerous.
>
> Here's why...
>
> A couple in Swee****er, 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. When it had warmed up, it slithered out and
> the
> wife saw it go under the sofa and screamed.
>
> 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.
>
> 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. His 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 faint and she saw her neighbor lying
> on
> the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed that 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 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 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.
>
> Mean while, burning drapes, were seen by the neighbors who called the
> fire
> department. The firemen had started raising the fire truck 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, and the police acquired a new car.
>
> 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.
>
>
>