Va. Snake Saga Rattles Residents, Ends in Ban

Then the plumber showed up.

On March 11, a plumber came unannounced to Nguyen's house to fix the leaky hot tub on the back deck. When he spied 20 or so dead snakes in containers nearby, he frantically dialed 911. Within minutes, police cars and the animal control van screeched up in front of the house and blocked the street. Nguyen said officers asked him whether they could come in. He said he replied no; he hadn't done anything wrong. He said he explained that he had taken the dead snakes out of the freezer, at the request of a herpetology researcher, to begin to "skeletonize" them.

For more than five hours, officers milled around Nguyen's property in what neighbors call the Snake Standoff. Officers peered through the windows of the garage with a scope. Whispered reports of labels reading "Black Mamba," "Boa" and "Rattlesnake" electrified the wide-eyed crowd that had gathered across the street.

Using the laptop in her van, animal control Officer Alice Burton searched local ordinances. The District, Falls Church, Fairfax City and Prince William and Prince George's counties ban possession of venomous snakes. (Alexandria is considering a ban.) Under Arlington County code, it is illegal to "display, exhibit, handle, or use any poisonous or dangerous reptile in such a manner as to endanger the life or health of any person." But that didn't cover dead snakes by the hot tub or live ones in the garage. And although neighbors did mention the loose exotic snakes, there was no way to prove where they had come from. "It's not like they're stamped with an address or wear a tag like a dog," Deputy County Manager Marsha Allgeier said.

As neighborhood pressure mounted, the county convened a task force and put a venomous reptile ban on the fast track. "The consequences of venomous snakes escaping and hurting someone were too great," Allgeier said. "We felt we needed to draw the line."

Nguyen, 39, is a quiet, private man -- neighbors profess seeing little of either him or the man he shares the house with -- with a hobby that he is well aware few understand. But to tell him to stop collecting snakes, he said, would be like telling Van Gogh not to paint.

Nguyen, who writes and edits advertising copy, would not say how many snakes he collects, only that it varies with births and deaths. County officials reported at civic association meetings that he at one time had "well over 100." Nguyen said his collection has ranged from the harmless, startlingly green tree boa, to the puff adder, a favorite, to a Field's horned viper, whose venom he described as "thermonuclear."

He said he has been fascinated with snakes since before he learned to walk. And he has been collecting them since he was 8, when he caught his first venomous snake, a baby western cottonmouth, while on vacation.

His snakes are specimens, not pets. A snake is not something you get emotionally attached to, he explained. You research its history, anatomy and physiology. You observe its behavior. You don't handle it; you "encounter" it. Like a stamp or tropical fish collector, you scour the Internet and international dealer sites to round out the genus or species lines of particular interest. And, if you're like Nguyen, there is nothing like the thrill of being able to raise and breed the kind of snake no one else can.

Fea's vipers, "dazzling" bright blue natives of Himalayan cloud forests with red striping, usually die in captivity. Nguyen has three. A rare Ethiopian small-eyed viper with green and black patterns is considered the "Holy Grail" in snake collecting circles. "Only one person in the world has kept one alive for more than six months, and that was me," he said.

Nguyen said he has never been bitten by a venomous snake. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports about 7,000 venomous snake bites a year in the United States, 15 of which are fatal. And if that were ever to happen, he said, he has access to a private store of antivenin. "When handled responsibly, there's no contest between man and snake," he said. "They've got a brain the size of a lentil. If it bests you, you should think about keeping hamsters."

Still, since the plumber incident, Nguyen said he has been quietly moving his snakes to other locations. He won't say where: "I've had enough trouble here. I don't want it to follow." He has promised that the county can inspect his house to make sure it's empty.

Maybe then, he said, the neighborhood can once again be at peace.