I got this from a friend of mine late last year

GARDEN SNAKES CAN BE DANGEROUS...I NEVER KNEW THIS!
Snakes also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) 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. 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 lying 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 garden 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.

Grass snakes are very dangerous. When I was about 12 years old a neighbor friend and I caught a small grass snake. He put it in his cap and we went inside my home. My mother was cooking dinner and he took his cap off and laid it on the counter beside the stove with the snake in the cap. His father paddled him and my mother switched my butt. This proves grass snakes are dangerous.

Snake war story:
I was sent to a residence after dispatch received a 9-1-1 call where the phone had been dropped and screaming and shouting was heard. When I arrived, out in the driveway I found a very elderly lady calmly standing next to an equally elderly Kirby upright vacuum cleaner. She told me that her daughter in law had returned from the grocery store and while unloading a bag of potatoes, a snake had slithered out of the taters. The daughter panicked and tried to flee but fell and struck her head on the kitchen counter, cutting it open. The husband responded but stumbled over a table while barefooted and cut open his foot. None of the injured was present on scene, having been rushed to the ER by a teenaged son. Granny then related that she saw the snake curled up against a kitchen baseboard so she went and got her Kirby and proceeded to vacuum up the reptile! Being a reasonable person, I asked myself if it was feasible to actually suck up a snake with a vacuum cleaner. That question was answered when I saw the bag on the vacuum was... wiggling! I made a call to our fire dept, who had a volunteer who was an actual Herpetologist and asked him to respond. He was able to extract the snake from the Kirby and it was discovered to be a small corn snake and quite harmless. So, have a snake in the house? Use your vacuum cleaner to capture it. I recommend a ShopVac, since Kirbys are not all that common these days.

Not quite as dramatic but our cat is quite the hunter. She continually brings in mice, gophers, rats (some very large rats), bats, and snakes. About a week ago the wife was at the kitchen table admiring her plants when she noticed one plant was moving. It was a garter snake the cat brought in. No idea how it made it up to the kitchen table. Anyway husband saved the day by depositing the snake outdoors. It did spazz out and crap all over my hand so I was wounded in the heroic rescue of the wife. Does she care, not one bit.

"Honey, there is a mamba in the washing machine."

My mother, to my father when we lived in Liberia.

I think you had to have lived there to see the humor in it. I've never met an American who lived in Liberia who didn't have stories like this one.

If you've wondered why there are so many snakes ...

Snow Snake Rattle...... Shortly after arriving At Ft. Greely , Alaska (Cold Regions Test Center) Dec. 1973 (winter) I was handed a letter sized envelope that supposidly contained a rattle that had come off of a Snow Snake..... As I attempted to open the envelope I was startled and jumped upwards about 3 feet when a large rattling sound came from inside the envelope.. Turns out it was a large buttlerfly paperclip reshapped with a rubberband that was twisted tight with a regular paper clip.... When envelope sides pressure released the twisted paper clip began spinning at a high rate of speed making the sound of a pissed off rattle snake in you hands....... Common welcome tactic to new arrivals to Ft. Greely and yes I did return the favor to other new arrivals at a later date. ................................ drill sgt.

I took an EMT course, taught by a very experienced paramedic, in a Denver area hospital years ago. He swore this was a true story. A squad was called out to a “man down” call somewhere in metro Denver. Paramedics were working the guy and were hindered by the couple’s cat, who kept jumping up on the man’s chest. They’d shoo it away and it would come right back. They determined that the man wasn’t breathing and had no pulse. A paramedic was leaning over the man’s chest with defibrillator paddles in his hands when once again, the cat jumped up on the guy’s chest. Aggravated, the medic hit the cat with a charged paddle and it streaked, smoking out of the kitchen. The wife seeing this, fainted in the dining room, and the cat may, or may not, have started the living room curtains on fire.

quote:

Originally posted by drill sgt:
Snow Snake Rattle...... Shortly after arriving At Ft. Greely , Alaska (Cold Regions Test Center) Dec. 1973 (winter) I was handed a letter sized envelope that supposidly contained a rattle that had come off of a Snow Snake..... As I attempted to open the envelope I was startled and jumped upwards about 3 feet when a large rattling sound came from inside the envelope.. Turns out it was a large buttlerfly paperclip reshapped with a rubberband that was twisted tight with a regular paper clip.... When envelope sides pressure released the twisted paper clip began spinning at a high rate of speed making the sound of a pissed off rattle snake in you hands....... Common welcome tactic to new arrivals to Ft. Greely and yes I did return the favor to other new arrivals at a later date. ................................ drill sgt.

I use to do that as a kid and give the envelope to my adult neighbors.

I may have told my favorite snake story on here previously, but old men should be given grace when it comes to repeating their tales, so.....

The day before school was to be let out for the summer, I caught a small 15 inch green snake and decided it would be a great present for my 55 year old 4th grade teacher. She was a decent teacher even if she was a little on the crazy side. Her best attribute was her innate sense of fairness - everybody was treated equally regardless of wealth, looks, or political connections. She also used a leather strap to administer punishment for inappropriate behavior. (To be honest, she wasn't very talented with the strap and the thought of it was much worse than the actual effect. I received about a half-dozen admonishments over the year and they were quite mild.) But I digress...

My plan was to put it in her middle desk drawer where she always kept the report cards, so I sneaked in before class started and let the little critter crawl into the drawer and closed it. The snake played his part perfectly. He (or she) lay quietly in the dark desk drawer until she opened it to pass out the report cards, whereupon he crawled to the front of the drawer and arose just like a cobra to see what all the excitement was about.

Being a typical fourth grade kid in the 1950's, I had given no thought to what the teacher's response was gonna be (run, faint, heart attack, Rambo rage). Neither had I considered the consequences for me. I just assumed I would end up either famous or notorious - either one being a promotion from being just one of many faces of a fourth grade class.

Unfortunately, my dreams of fame were shattered when she reached out and gently picked the snake up and quietly announced: "Whoever is the owner of this little guy needs to come and retrieve him before one of the rowdy boys in here tries to hurt him." In hindsight, I should have given a "Ralphie from Christmas Story" look of innocence and no one would have been wiser, but quick thinking and self-preservation were not in my repertoire either then or now. So, I meekly took my snake jar and retrieved the little guy and no more was said about the incident - and the few classmates of that time who are still alive have no remembrance of the event. Such is life!