In early 2007 my life was a total mess. I was sleeping on a leaking air mattress, on the floor of a rundown shotgun house in a rough neighbourhood in a city shattered by the hurricane, and where murders were as common as kindness to strangers. My next door neighbour was a Boa Constrictor with a head as big as mine. I never saw him. But I saw the frightened face of the punk kid that stopped by every other week or so to feed the him turkeys, while the beast's roommate (my landl