Weather finally warmed up enough to have my pair of Andeans shipped here to me in Maine.

This is Hansel… so named because he’s from Germany, one half of a brother/sister duo… but mostly because I don’t know any other famous German couple to name them after. They were produced by our European friend Burnsy/Gerrit. Gretel just ate yesterday so I decided not to subject her to the rigors of a photo session. Gretel is a little smaller than Hansel but has an almost identical aberrant pattern to her.

Gerrit and Scott Ballard acquired a breeding group of 2.4 Andeans from Hungary known to throw both aberrant and striped patterned individuals on a regular basis… clutches were 50% normal, 25% aberrant and 25% striped if I recall correctly. Gerrit was kind enough to sell me a pair of my choice from his latest clutch and Scott was kind enough to import them for me along with 9-10 neonates of his own. Scott also kindly sent a picture of his adult striped female that produced those same neonates for me to include in this post … not the greatest of photos but good enough to see how she’s an almost perfectly striped individual.

The most interesting thing to me with these striped Andeans is that the dorsal band is white… gaigeae I’ve seen are always red…other ssp’s of striped milks I’ve seen always have a black dorsal strip. Rather interesting but not interesting enough for me to delve into the reasons why this difference in the dorsal stripe is displayed differently in the ssp’s.

So there you have it, my acquisitions for this year… unlike most years a thank you goes out to Gerrit for providing them to me… and a “tip of the hat” to Scott for saving me the import fees and for the use of a photo.

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