I don't consider myself a "radical" locality guy, but nonetheless I like to know as much as possible about the snakes I breed. I personally don't call a pairing "locality" unless the male and female could have, conceivably, met in the wild. To me that means, for most colubrids, a distance of at most three or four miles (as the raven flies).

Most snakes live their entire lives in an area of a few acres to a square mile or so-this is especially true of females (check out Fitch's classic studies on copperheads, ringnecks and other common midwestern snakes). If I catch a suboc on river road, it is unlikely that snake is some wanderer from many miles away (even Mexico)-not impossible of course, just unlikely. It's probably a local resident. For my own locality pairings, I can tell a customer the exact spot where each parent was found (if I can't, then I don't represent them as locality animals).

That said, it's true that most people don't care much about locality-they just want a healthy, nice-looking animal. Either way, the important thing is that the breeder represent his animals honestly. That way every potential owner can come to their own conclusions.
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

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