Cottonwood Heights police cited Thomas Cobb a week ago for failure to have an exotic pet permit and told him he had until Friday to get rid of all but one of his 29 boa constrictors.

Cobb values the snakes at $12,000 apiece and said he spent $100,000 on a special room in his basement with top-of-the-line cages. Some of the snakes are as long as 7 feet. Police officers noted in their report the setup was clean and well-kept.

City council members agreed on Friday to look into the case further after Cobb argued that a local ordinance is confusing.

Cobb got the attention of the council and the mayor after he took his fight against the snake eviction to the Internet and local radio shows. He maintains he’s the victim, in part, of the public’s distaste for snakes in general.

“We see movies, we see `Snakes on a Plane,’ we see `Anaconda,’ we see these movies where snakes are portrayed as monsters and can eat school buses, and that is not the case,” he told The Deseret News

Read more: Huffington Post