Here’s a tombstone poesy from Ol’ Hoss for those you who don’t get to write your own. Works good in Redneck Territory, too.
“Here lies the body of our Anna,
“Done to death by a banana.
“It wasn’t the fruit that laid her low,
“But the skin of the thing that made her go.”
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Garden snakes, also known as Garter snakes can be dangerous. Yes, grass snakes, not just rattlesnakes. Here’s why.
A couple in Sweetwater, Texas, had a lot of potted plants. During a recent cold spell, the wife, Mrs. Ginkham Gorkbork, was bringing a lot of them indoors to protect them from a possible freeze. It turned out that a little green garden snake was hidden in one of the plants. When weather warmed, the snake slithered out and Mrs. Gorkbork saw it sneak under the sofa. She let loose with a very well-punctuated scream.
Mr. Gorkbork (who was taking a shower) ran out into the living room, bare naked, to see what the problem was. She told him there was a snake uder the sofa. He got down on his hands and knees to look for it. About that time the family dog came and cold-nosed him on the flanks. He thought the snake had bitten him, so he screamed and fell over on the floor.
His wife thought he had had a hart attack, 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 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 Mr. Gorkbork broke his leg.
Mrs. Gorkbork 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 found the snake wriggling around. She screamed, then fainted and the snake rushed back under the sofa.
The neighbor, seeing her lying there passed out, tried to use CPR to revive her. The neighbor’s wife, who had just returned from 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 carrots, knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where he needed stitches.
The noise woke Mrs. Gorkbork from her dead faint and she saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him. She assumed the snake had bitten him, so she went to the kitchen and got a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down his throat.
By now the police had arrived. They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey and assumed that a drunk fight had occurred. They were about to arrest them all, when the woman tried to explain how it all happened over a little green snake.
The police called another 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 cops drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake but hit the leg of the end table. The table fell over, the lamp on it shattered and, as the bulb exploded it started a fire in the drapes.
The other policeman tried to beat out the flames, but he fell through the window into the yard on top of the family dog. The dog, 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, knowing that speed is of the essence, 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 10-square city block (but they did get the fire out).
Time passed. Both men eventually were released from the hospital, the house was repaired, the dog came home, the police acquired a new car and all was right with their world.
Awhile later the Gorkborks were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold spell for that night. The wife asked her husband if he thought they should bring in the plants for the night. That’s when he shot her.