Mr. Squeeze spends his days overlooking Interlaken Park — when he’s not doing outreach work for the Pacific Northwest Herpetological Society. Mr. Squeeze helps people learn about snakes by visiting schools, fairs, and expositions. He is a a 5’6” Dumeril’s Boa whose ancestors came from Madagascar. Mr. Squeeze is three years old. A rare snake in the trade, he is “very mellow” and spends a lot of time around children in classrooms as an introduction to holding or even seeing snakes for the first time. According to his friend David, Mr. Squeeze is the “most easygoing of all the six species living in the house.”
We ask photographer Alex Garland to follow marchers in the rain and do crazy things like trying to make yet another picture of yet another huge apartment building look interesting. We thought we’d ask him to do something a little more fun. Capitol Hill Pets is a semi-regular look at our furry, fuzzy, feathered, and finned friends found out and about on Capitol Hill. Are you a Capitol Hill Pet we should know about? Drop us a line.
Some people worry that naked photos of Mr. Squeeze on the internet are going to come back to haunt him. But this photo shoot was his first big break, something to get him beyond the elementary school outreach business into fashion modeling and acting. A lot of famous actors and models (and even the wives of presidential candidates) do a little softcore to get started. That’s the business.
He’s not just a pretty face; he is a classically trained boa. His dream is to play either asp in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra opposite Emma Thompson. No, he’s not Egyptian, and he’s not venomous, but he’s the Meryl Streep of snakes.
Act V, Scene 2:
Come, thou mortal wretch,
(To an asp, which she applies to her breast)
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool
Be angry, and dispatch.
…
Nay, I will take thee too.
(Applying another asp to her arm)
What should I stay–
(Dies)