I just hate it when the truth has to go ahead and find a way to ruin a perfectly good (and believable) urban legend:

Phoenix, Arizona police have denied reports live rattlesnakes were released in a cinema during a screening of Snakes On A Plane, insisting the claims are a hoax. Local news reports on Tuesday said cinema-goers were terrified when two live venomous rattlesnakes were released at a showing of the Samuel L. Jackson film last Friday. Phoenix police sergeant Joel Tranter admits there is a shred of truth to the story - a 10-inch rattlesnake was found on Friday in a hallway at the movie theatre, but is thought to have slithered there on its own. A security guard swept the snake up outside and trapped it in a plastic container until a member of the Arizona Herpetological Association could haul it away. Snake handlers had also been called to the theatre earlier in the day to retrieve another rattlesnake from outside.

Every once in a while I wish we didn’t have the internet.  I would have been a lot happier not knowing that this story had been debunked.