My husband the snake charmer

So we were over visiting the Christensen's the other night and I was upstairs with the girls holding Heather's adorable little girl and the boys were supposedly downstairs watching UFC. Robin went downstairs and there were mysteriously no boys. Perhaps they were so inspired by UFC that they had gone outside to box in the streets? No- it was raining. Maybe they went to get some food?? Couldn't be-everyone had already eaten. As these different scenarios were circling in my head, we came to find out that no, they were over at the neighbor's house catching a BOA CONSTRICTOR! Yikes! All I could think of was the Shell Silverstein poem I loved so much when I was little which says, "I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor..." Now what is one to do with a 3+ ft. snake at 9:30 on a Friday night? Call Alex the snake wrangler, of course! The neighbor called the police and they had her call this Alex guy, and he showed up with his bucket, metal snake-catching apparatus thing, and his expertise. This is when I deemed it safe enough to go check this thing out. I learned 3 things that night:
#1- Boas are not indigenous to Las Vegas (this one happened to be a red tail tropical something or other.) Whew! It was probably someone's pet.
#2- I still like snakes a whole lot better as boots!
#3- the "snake guy" is actually called a Herpetologist. Who knew?

So that was our exciting evening. I didn't get over my fear of snakes by any means, but I did make leaps and bounds- I even touched the little guy....then jumped off the porch when it looked at me and did the tongue thing. Guess I can't win 'em all!