During a recent cold spell, a couple was bringing potted plants indoors to protect them from a freeze.

It turned out that a little green snake was hidden in one of the plants and when it had warmed up, it slithered out.  The wife saw it
go under the sofa and let out a very loud scream. The husband, who was taking a shower, ran into the living room naked to see what the problem was. She told him of the snake under the sofa.

He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look. About that time, the family dog came and cold-nosed him on the leg. He thought the snake had bitten him and he fainted. His wife thought he had a heart attack, and called an ambulance. The EMTs rushed in and loaded him on the stretcher and started carrying him out.

Just then the snake came out from under the sofa and an EMT saw it and dropped his end of the stretcher. That's when the man broke his leg and why he is in the hospital.

The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called on a neighbor. 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 in relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where she felt the snake. She screamed and fainted, the snake rushed back under the sofa, and 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. An ambulance was again called.

The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him.  Assuming he had been bitten by the snake, she went to the kitchen, brought back a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat.

Now the police 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 two women tried to explain how it all happened over a little green snake. The ambulance arrived  and took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife.

Just then the snake crawled out from under the sofa. One of the policeman drew and fired at it. He missed, but hit the leg of an end table. The table fell over and the lamp on it shattered.  As the bulb broke, it started a fire in the drapes. The other policeman tried to beat out the flames but fell through the window into the yard on top of the family dog.  Startled, it jumped up and raced out into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid
it and smashed into the parked police car.

Meanwhile the fire had spread to the walls and the entire house was blazing. An arriving fire truck started raising its ladder halfway down the street. The ladder tore out overhead wires and put out the electricity and disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block area.

Time passed.  Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was re-built, the police acquired a new car, and all was right with the world.  About a year later while watching TV the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The husband asked his wife if she thought they should bring in their plants.

She shot him.