I'm sorry to hear about the current events, but I hope you come out happier than before..
On a side note, not to be a negative nancy, but you are in a bit of a sticky situation for now. He's got your snakes, you've got his car. Normally I would tell you to just go pick them up when he's not home and that's the end of that. But if you do that now he might just take his car back.... Anothe rissue is that if you don't retreive them soon enough, he may just sell them and then there goes your collection.
Is he refusing to give them to you? See if you can take them to a friend's house and fix the paperwork with the car ASAP.