Ellen Schmittroth of Richland, Wash., recently sent me an urban legend that appeared in a letter to the editor of the Tri-City Herald there.
Schmittroth says she read the letter over the telephone to her mother, and claims that Mom "laughed so hard she dislocated her jaw.""Maybe the surgeon general should put warning labels on such stories," she added. So be warned, readers; it is a hilarious one.
The Herald reader had come across the story in the Batesville (Ark.) Daily Guard. It was supposed to have happened in Houston, Texas:
"Seems the weather turned cold, so a Houston man brought an outside hanging plant into the house to keep it from freezing. Living in said plant was a small green snake.
"The snake warmed up, then slithered onto the floor and under the sofa. The man's wife was the first to spot it, and she screamed.
"The man, who was taking a shower, ran naked into the front room. He bent down to look for the snake. The couple's pet dog cold-nosed the man in the rear end, and thinking it was the snake, the man fainted dead away.
"The woman figured her husband was having a heart attack, so she called an ambulance. When it showed up the attendants loaded the man on a stretcher. About this time the snake reappeared, scaring the attendants.
"They dropped the stretcher, breaking the man's leg. And that's how he landed in the hospital."
Need I explain to you, readers, that dropped stretchers are one sure tip-off of an urban legend?
I've chuckled many times over print or oral variations of this story. It's been around at least 20 years, and I've heard it from England as well as the United States.
And the dropped stretcher is a feature of all sorts of "hilarious accident" stories that I've cataloged under the title "The Laughing Paramedics."
When we last encountered this particular motif, it followed an exploding toilet accident. But it also crops up in a story about a man who climbs onto the roof of his house, tying a rope to his car below for safety.
Unaware of her husband's presence, the man's wife gets into the car and drives off, dragging him.
The paramedics find this story highly amusing, although you might think they would grow accustomed to such accidents after a while.
But back to our snake story, which doesn't even need to feature a snake, by the way. In some versions the man simply comes out of the shower to perform some errand, which then goes wrong.
Usually the paramedics drop the stretcher when they hear how the original accident occurred, and they begin to laugh uncontrollably.
Snake-and-plant stories seem to be popular in Houston. I once heard a radio talk-show host there tell a variation I call "The Snake's Christmas," complete with the "Laughing Paramedic" punchline. The seasonal twist was that the man originally brought into his home a live Yule tree which happened to have a snake lurking in its roots.
Variations go on and on. The man always starts out in the shower, but other missions he emerges to perform include unstopping a drain, fixing a leak under the sink, checking the water heater, and getting his undershorts out of the dryer.
None of these tasks seems like something one would do in the nude, does it? But that's the way the story has to go.
Next, if the family dog doesn't "cold-nose" him, it's the family cat that takes a swipe at the man's sensitive parts.
Either way, the man is knocked cold. Enter wife. Enter paramedics. Exit all, laughing their heads off.