With 36 snakes, 9 little pippers, more eggs on the way, and a small chest freezer full of frozen feeders plus my family's chest freezer (which has several deer and a butchered pig in it) and the kitchen refrigerator for my food... I have a generator. For a winter power outage the snakes would be moved to the room with my wood stove, the generator would power the blower to keep the room in the mid-80's. Two summers ago my generator more than paid for itself when the power was out for four days in July with daytime high temperatures over 100*F; I didn't lose a bit of perishable food.

You don't need a whole-house backup generator, just figure out what appliances you will need to run in extreme temperatures (super hot and super cold) to keep yourself and your animals healthy, get a portable unit that can be run outside, some heavy-duty extension cords, and surge protectors.

Oh, and expect your neighbors to get mad if you don't let them plug in a cord as well. I did let them throw their food into my freezer, they kicked over some gas money so it was all good.

Also be prepared to guard the thing 24/7. When the power was out we had ...extra... slow-moving foot/vehicle traffic through our neighborhood between midnight and 6:00 a.m. No, I never had to confront anyone, just showing that someone was awake in the house was enough to encourage them to move along.