I might have to leave for a while

Garden Snakes, also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis), can be dangerous
Yes, these are non-venomous grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's why.

We have 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 garter 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.

I was in the middle of taking a shower when I heard her scream. I ran out into the living room naked to see
what the problem was. She told him there was a snake under the sofa.

I got down on the floor on my hands and knees to look for it. About that
time the family dog came and cold-nosed me on the behind. I thought the
snake had bitten me,( I didn't know it was just a garter snake) so I screamed and fell over on the floor.

My wife thought I had had a heart attack, so she covered me up, told
me to lie still and called an ambulance.

The attendants rushed in, would not listen to my protests, loaded me on
the stretcher, and started carrying me 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 I broke my leg. The quickly splinted it gave me some pain meds and rushed me to 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 my wife'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 my wife 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 thinking it would dilute or slow down the poison.

Our other neighbor must have heard the commotion and called the police because they had just shown up to investigate a domestic disturbance.


They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a
drunken fight had occurred. They were about to arrest them all, when my wife 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 me and my neighbor 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,my wife and I were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold
snap for that night. The wife asked me if I thought they should
bring in their plants for the night.

And that's when I shot her.

Think the jury will understand?