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Garden Grass Snakes, also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis),
can be dangerous.

Yes, grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's why.

A couple in Morro Bay, California, had a lot of potted plants. During a
recent chilly 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 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 neighbour.

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, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where she
felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted, and the snake
rushed back under the sofa.

The neighbour, seeing her lying there passed out, tried to use CPR to
revive her.

The neighbour'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 neighbour
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 neighbour 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 family dog who, startled, jumped up and
raced into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and
smashed into the parked police car.

Meanwhile, the burning drapes were seen by the neighbours 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, 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, 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.

That's when he shot her.