Garden Grass 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 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 naked into the living room 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.
But while relaxing, she dangled her hand in between the cushions, where she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted and 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 so that he 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 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 little 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 startled family dog who, jumped out and raced into the street where an oncoming car swerved to avoid the dog and smashed into the parked police car.
Meanwhile, the 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 and both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was repaired, the dog came home, the police were issued a new car, and all was right with their world.
Several days 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.
That’s when he shot her.
Oh reading that gave me such a laugh over my morning coffee today , poor guy , I had to laugh at the dog nosing his butt, poor guy suffered a lot didnt he ! thaks for making me laugh so much over my morning coffee.
I sure will make sure our plants stay outdoors then in the future !
It was back in ‘86 and I had just had back surgery. It was this time of year and was getting pretty warm, but I wasn’t able to put up my a/c.
I was lying on the floor watching TV, my head on the beanbag and fans going directly on me. I got drowsy and went to sleep and was almost woken by my cat sniffing my face but pushed him away and kept on sleeping.
Finally, his mewing in my ear got me up and when I gingerly bent forward from the prone position, a garter snake crawled out from the small of my back. My back was so sticky from sweat, it stuck to me for a while or I’d never have noticed it, being barely awake. I sure felt it when it popped off and hit the floor–and was immediately pounced upon by the cat.
The cat had his own doors and would bring in “edibles” all the time. I was gone for a couple of days once and had left him plenty of food and water, but he had brought it at least a half dozen birds. (I THINK there were two birds in the bones and feathers I cleaned up) There were four bloody and battered birdies sitting up in the old-fashioned lamp globe on the ceiling, their eyes wide-open in fright.
I guess the old Beej thought I wasn’t coming back and decided to have a living larder, bless ‘im.
Believe it or not, a couple days later there were TWO snakes under my back after a nap. THAT one freaked me out much more than did the first.
I’d been meaning to write about this in my blog, and might still do so, but it sure fit here.
Yep that would be a good post for sure. Well I can tolerate most creatures but I have no fondness for snakes of any kind! I would certainly have freaked out and probably wouldn’t have laid back on the floor a second time, well not anytime soon. Good thing the Beej was on the spot! I have had afew encounters over the years, but would as soon forget them! Another thing I can stand is wasps and bees… well probably more phobic over them than snakes, I had a single wide trailer when I first moved down here next to the grocery store I was working. well I was mowing the grass one day and being single and cheap too I had a water line run from the store’s water pump to my trailer ;) just that black plastic pipe, forgot what its called now, its not used anymore, well anyway there where it came out of the ground was loop in it going up into the floor. I grabbed hold of a part of the loop that was in the way of mowing to move it over and all of a sudden these ground bees were coming out from everywhere and into my hair and in my shirt, and up my pants legs too! Well I went beserk and took off running and stripping at the same time! I couldnt have cared less who saw me that day, by the time I hit the front door I was down to my shorts and flailing my arms like mad. Must have been a funny sight, but it wasnt me laughing, those bees bite! one took a chunk out of my nose.. ok a small chunk but it felt big! lol
Reading that last post Chester it reminded me of something similar that happened to me years ago , well here in Cyprus those yukky light brown roaches are common in households , especially some of the older buildings , well we were living in my mother in laws old shack as our house was just being built and we couldnt affort to rent , and one evening I had a friend around to visit and I opened a cupboard door to get something and this huge roach fell out and on to my shoulder , well I tried to shake it off my T-shirt and somehow it went inside , oh I have never performed a breakdance like I did that night ! I was all over the place, as was the roach inside of my clothes , well my poor friend didnt know what had happened to me LOL , she couldnt stop laughing when she saw the darn thing scuttle out eventually , Oh it was so horrible , you know they dont die off easily those things , I think I read somewhere online it would be one of the few things that would survive a nuclear fallout ! well I dont know how far its true but they certainly seem to take ages to succumb to the insecticide sprays that get directed on them in my house , I know I am supposed to be ozone friendly and not use those things but hey im petrified of them .
as for snakes we have our share of those too , well I have had one of those huge black ones fall into my back garden from the fields beyond my house , well if fell from up a hight and it sounded such a thud , well it was coiled at the beginning and when I opened the door to see what it was it uncoiled and slithered at break neck speed across to my neighbours plot , well I moved just as fast back indoors and slammed the door, oh the black ones are not poisenous but I still the thought of one even being near me gives me a chill .
It seems when I move to the US I will still have a lot of these scary creepy crawlies etc around me and reading that last post it doesnt look like I will have a brave husband to fend them off for me either ! lol , he will be out of the door flailing arms and legs ; )
well I will just have to rely on getting me a cat like Mikes that will enjoy playing and eating them up iinstead .
Alison, that ol’ cat was the first B-cat; he would fight a circle buzz saw, but this one is scared of his own shadow.
The last time elle was over here we were lying on a pallet on the floor, watching TV, and she was quietly sobbing, sad that she was going to leave the next day.
I was comforting her the best I could when all of a sudden she screamed and at first I thought “Man, she’s REALLY upset about leaving and is having a nervous breakdown!”
A cricket had jumped on her. Those black, nasty things with the “claws” on their feet….I didn’t blame her.