Dad Level: 10,000

I had a buddy in college that kept a pet snake in his dorm room. I never would have known he had a snake except, one day, the snake wasn't in the aquarium. Instead, el serpiente was just chillin' on the desk. In the dorm room. In between me and exit. 

My lizard brain went straight into fight-or-flight mode. Flight wins. I go from zero to sixty faster than ever before. My onboard navigation system calculated the most direct route (through the shared bathroom, out the neighbors dorm room) and I was g-o-n-e. Didn't look back until I was halfway across campus. Never returned to the scene of the crime. Naturally, my buddies found it humorous.

Fast forward 17 years. There's a HUGE snake in my basement. Alex is 10' away. This is not a drill, people. Fight or flight? Place your bets...

I kicked that snakes @ss (or whatever they have)! Well, technically not. More like, I managed to keep my organs from shutting down long enough to trap the goliath in a bucket with the help of a broom and 8' piece of moulding. Pretty sure I was radiating beams of manliness at the time.

Clearly, the snake knew too much and would not be permitted to return to the woods behind the house. It's his lucky day though. This snake is on a relocation program. So I plunked a lid on the bucket, taped it down with a pretty good mix of duct tape and packaging tap, put it in the front seat and drove it down to the Ag Farm.

I knew the snake needed a name. Unfortunately, the only thing that came to mind was a nickname for someone at work. Now, when we drive past the Ag Farm (twice a day), we all shout, "hello" to the snake named after one of my colleagues.

Bjoern the Unicorn

This is Bjoern. He's a Unicorn. And when connected to a garden hose, water shoots out of his horn. While it's clear why he joined the team, Bjeorn has a critical shortcoming: he takes a loooong time to inflate with the included pump. We're talkin' 15-20 minutes.

This is a Ridgid 12-gallon high performance wet dry vac. It's 5 horsepower, 145 CFM are best used to power a workshop dust collection system, scare a toddler or suck up anything smaller than an apple. With a simple configuration change, you can reverse the flow of air through the hose.

Discovering I could inflate Bjeorn with the Ridgid was the highlight of my day. I took that thing from empty to party-time in 15 seconds. Then I giggled. Deflating was fun too.

Update (July 7): I went a little overboard with the vacuum the second time. 15 second: just right. 18 seconds: unrecoverable malfunction. Bjeorn is no longer with us. ...was a challenge to "retire" him without the kids seeing.