the two big issues were as follows
1 - I do not have my own account and had a friend ship for me
Kyle pmd me his address and I checked twice after I copied it, but I wasn't the one who filled out the shipping label and somewhere along the line the street address lost a digit
2 - I followed the tracking and was satisfied that everything was fine once the tracking said "delivered", but I was not in touch with Kyle until the evening, when I should have been in touch with someone through the whole process
what UPS did was deliver to a wrong address and did not get a signture, but I can't for sure say that the address error was their fault
not that any of it is likely to matter very much now, for this particular snake, but those are the two big things I ought to have done differently and I will never forget this
if I had done just the second thing, then we would have been on the track of that package within a half hour and my baby would be safe now
would have would have should have - oh man