I didn't think twice about this tiny fe=low on my baby boxwood until I got this letter:

GARDEN SNAKES CAN BE DANGEROUS...
Snakes also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) can be dangerous= Yes, grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's why.

A couple in &nbs=;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 sl=thered out and the wife saw it go under the sofa.

She let out a ve=y 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 an= fell over on the floor.

His wife thought he had had a heart attac=, 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 tim=, the snake came out from under the sofa and the Emergency Medical Techni=ian saw it and dropped his end of the stretcher. That's when the man brok= 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 vo=unteered to capture the snake. He armed himself with a rolled-up newspape= 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 wriggl=ng 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 mou=h and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a bag of canned go=ds, knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed sti=ches.

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 assume= 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 uncon=cious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occu=red. 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.

N=w, 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 poli=eman 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 th= 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 ri=ht with their world.

A while later they were watching TV and the=weatherman announced a cold snap for that night.. The wife asked her husb=nd if he thought they should bring in their plants for the night.

=nd that's when he shot her.