Is there a short-circuiting dictionary "get" method?

[Dave Opstad]

In this snippet:

d = {'x': 1}
value = d.get('x', bigscaryfunction())

the bigscaryfunction is always called, even though 'x' is a valid key. 
Is there a "short-circuit" version of get that doesn't evaluate the 
second argument if the first is a valid key? For now I'll code around 
it, but this behavior surprised me a bit...

Dave