Among other things: When things go bad...

This is the time of year when early freeze warning advise gardeners to bring in plants that could be victimized by killing frosts. But it’s a dangerous time for well intentioned gardeners attempting to save their plants.

One of the provisions of Murphy’s Law is based on the principle that when things go wrong they will – at the worst possible time.  A prime example of this reportedly happened in a Texas city – which could make it a candidate for a tall Texas tale.

Presumably, it started with a little green garden snake. Little ol’ grass snakes aren’t dangerous, but a couple in the Texas town would have a different opinion. It seems that the couple had some potted plants and during a cold spell, the wife brought some of them indoors to protect them from possible frost.

Hidden in one of the plants was a little green garden snake and when it had warmed up, it slithered out and the wife saw it go under the sofa. She screamed. Her husband, who had been taking a shower, ran out into the living room naked to see what the problem was. She told him there was 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 leg. He thought the snake had bitten him and he fainted. His wife thought he had a heart attack, so she called an ambulance.

The attendants rushed in and loaded him onto a stretcher and started carrying him out. Just then 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 was carted off to the hospital.

His wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called a neighbor man to help. He volunteered to capture the snake, 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.

As the neighbor went out the door, she felt the snake. She screamed and fainted, the snake slithered back under the couch, and the neighbor rushed back in and saw her laying there. He tried to revive her using CPR.

Just then the neighbor’s wife returned from shopping and had picked up some items for her neighbor’s wife. When she entered the house to find her husband bent over the woman and … well, she jumped to contusions and smacked her hubby over the head with a sack of canned goods, knocking him out and inflicting a scalp wound so bad that it needed stitches. The ambulance again was called and the medics determined the injury required hospital treatment.

All the noise woke the woman from her faint and when she saw the Good Samaritan volunteer laying unconscious on the floor and his wife bent over him, she assumed he had been bitten by the snake. She ran out to the kitchen and got a small bottle of whiskey and started 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 two women tried to explain how it all happened over a little green snake. The ambulance took away the injured neighbor and his sobbing wife.

As the cops prepared to leave, the snake again crawled out from under the couch. One of the cops drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake but hit the leg of the lamp table next to the sofa. The table fell over, the lamp shattered and 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, which jumped up and raced into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into the police car and set it on fire.

Meanwhile, the burning drapes spread to the walls and soon the entire house was ablaze. Neighbors called the fire department and the arriving firemen started raising the fire truck’s ladder as they were halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires and blacked out the electricity and disconnected telephone service in a 10-square city block area.

Time passed. Both men were discharged from the hospital; the house was rebuilt; the police acquired a new car, and all was right with their world – until about a year later. As the man and his wife watched the evening news the TV weatherman warned of an approaching cold front that was expected to bring freezing temperatures.

The husband asked his wife if she thought they should bring in the plants for the night.

That’s when she shot him.