Residents of one Arlington Va. neighborhood are sleeping a little more peacefully thanks to a ban on keeping venomous snakes as pets. According to Fox News, for the past five years Peter Nguyen has been keeping several deadly reptiles in his garage and causing quite a stir for his neighbors. Residents all around Nguyen have been complaining for years about the number of snakes in the area and are saying he is the cause of the problem. With complaints piling up from neighbors who have stepped on rattlesnakes, spotted five plus foot snakes in their yards, and found the deadly reptiles just feet away from where their children were playing, ultimately it was a report of 20 plus dead snakes being found by a plumber attempting to fix a hot tub that lead to authorities enacting the ban.

While Nguyen insists that the snakes seen around the area are a different species than what he keeps in his garage under heat laps, he has agreed to move the reptiles to a location outside the county with in thirty days. Nguyen goes on to say that his snakes are typically of the African Pit viper variety and that all his snakes are kept in secured plastic containers. As far as the twenty dead snakes the plumber found these were dead snakes Nguyen set out to thaw so he could extract their skeletons. Regardless of why he’s keeping them though one neighbor told reporters" This isn't about snakes. This is about protecting our children. That my neighbor has something from Mexico or Africa that could kill my child violates the social compact in a profound way.”