"Nasty Snake" joke

One morning I awoke and stumbled out of my bedroom to find a snake behind the wall unit in my hallway. It had a black and yellow tail with it's head hidden behind the unit. After screaming blue murder and gathering my children on top of the kitchen table, I proceeded to ring every darn place in the phone book that I thought could help me get rid of it.

I rang everyone, from government departments to the police, even the RSPCA. No-one had anyone that could come and get the snake. After several hours on the kitchen table, the snake still had not moved. I figured he may have swallowed a mouse and was stuck.

Desperately in need of a bathroom break (we couldn't use ours as it would have meant walking past the snake) we bundled into the car and went down and used the one at KFC. We returned home to find that the rotten snake was still there.

One last desperate phone call (at around 5pm) was made to a pest control company. Yes... (thank goodness) they did have a man that could remove the snake, but he was off duty, and lived about 45 minutes out of town. A fair bit of begging later, we arranged for the man to come into town... and I was prepared to pay ANYTHING!

The nice man rocked up about an hour later and had a look. He went back out to his van and got a torch and came back in for another look. I was cringing in the kitchen so that I didn't have to view the vicious man-eating reptile with big gnashing teeth. After a few minutes I heard a burst of laughter come from the lounge room. I failed to see any humour in the situation, but called out to see if the man was ok. He sauntered into where I was cowering in the kitchen... with a plastic snake! The rotten thing wasn't real! He was laughing so hard he had tears running down his face.

He wouldn't allow me to pay him as he felt I had been punished enough... although I did at least manage to get him to take $20 for petrol. I had spent the day on the kitchen table and making bathroom visits at the local KFC for nothing. I told the man he could keep the "snake" and to this day I have no idea how it got there.

Several years later, I had moved when I got a pest control mob in to do my place for rodents. Who should I get? The same man that had "caught" my plastic snake... and no, he hadn't forgotten!