bunnies and kitties and snakes and fish and rats.

The boys were invited to a birthday party on the weekend - for my niece; V. She's 3.
My brother in law invited us all over to celebrate V's birthday on Saturday, so we packed up the van and headed over.

We knew that BIL had a fondness for snakes and had a pet Boa - which the boys have long been fascinated with. He also keeps pirahnas, and other assorted fish that they love to feed.

Reptiles generally are not allergen causing animals, so my husband, who suffers from multiple animal allergies as well as Asthma didn't think to pack any kind of inhalers, or Claritin. Bad idea.

Upon entering, we quickly found out that several animals had been added to the menagerie.
2 rabbits in a cage provided entertainment for the kids for the first 10 minutes. then they had to check out the new snakes - 3 in total. Not brave enough to touch them, but quite brave enough to taunt them from behind the safety of a plexiglass cage.
while they were doing that, a kitten raced by, which held their attention for most of the rest of the afternoon, as they chased the poor kitty up and down the stairs, trying to coax it out of hiding with a "c'mon kitty, come out - I'm very sweet and nice".
There is also another cat - much larger, about the size of a small planet, that waddled around, rather put out that Joey had found her water dish and not only was he munching her food, but he was also dropping it into her water dish.

I figured cat food wasn't the worst thing he could eat, after all, they had been subjected to cheesies and potato chips and cake and icecream, so whats a few kibble bits going to do? Of course, since their are snakes in the house, there is also snake food. - in the name of rats. 4 to be exact - two males and two females - for breeding purposes. one was ready to give birth any day, and the other had just had a litter of 6 or 7 tiny little hairless things that could all fit into the palm of my hand. Luckily they were all in cages, although the baby rats were brought out to show the kids.

lets recap:
2 rabbits
2 cats
3 snakes
10 rats
1 really cool chameleon, that put on quite a show as he ate live crickets from your fingers.
Plus, lets not forget the kids:
one 4 yr old
two 3 yr olds
one almost 2 yr old eating cat food
9 adults - including my dh who after 2 hours was practically blue. I asked "are you ok, can you breathe? do you want to go" and he'd staunchly say "not yet, I'm ok", but once we were on the way home he heaved a sigh of relief, and welcomed the air into his deprived lungs.

ah but the kids had fun.