Critters worse than copperheads or coyotes

My young co-worker spoke with an accent I could not place. He was telling me and another associate that the next day, Friday, would be his last day with our big-box store. I did not know him well, had never spoken with him at length since my transfer to that store just a few weeks previously, and we rarely crossed paths, for he was an assembler and I, a merchandiser/custodian.
He said his wife was going to graduate from the local university with a degree in petroleum engineering, and they were planning an immediate move to New Mexico where she had a job with an oil company waiting for her.
"And I'm going to be a house husband," he said, laughing.
My other co-worker in the conversation, a woman who had worked longer with him and knew him better, said, "Aren't you giong to go to school and finish your own degree?"
"Well, yes," he said, "but being a house husband sounds like more fun."
"What's your degree going to be?" I asked.
"Mechanical engineering," he said. "I've got about two years to go for my bachelor's degree."
"Well," I said. "Be careful in New Mexico. I hear they have some vicious venomous snakes there."
"Oh, I know all about vicious venomous snakes," he said. "We had some where I grew up."
My other co-worker said, "You grew up in Africa, didn't you?"
"Yes, South Africa," he sid.
"My God!" I exclaimed. "They've got black mambas there!"
He laughed, "Yes, and green mambas, too They're hard to see in the trees at night. And king cobras."
He then told about his grandmother who as a baby was sitting on the porch with her arms outstretched. Her parents looked to see what she was reaching for and there was a king cobra with its head up. They quickly grabbed the baby and backed into the house.
He told a couple other stories abut cobras. And he told about coming home to the farm from a visit to "the shops," which I took to mean the stores in town, and "there was a troop of baboons lounging around on the porch. We just went back to the shops for awhile."
Baboons are vicous creatures, he said. "They will tear you up."
At the end of that conversation, I decided, and told him so, that he was well prepared for life in New Mexico. Whatever snakes or other critters they had there could not compare with what he grew up with.