What got me into milks was the sheer variation of color and pattern even within a locality. Now I have been breeding long before the internet and the use of the term locality has changed dramatically. When I started there was a field guide but not much more, and the variation of milks simply cant be covered in something that simplistic. I dont want to go through this history again here, but suffice to say that the availability of digital pictures changed EVERYTHING. You dont have to buy on reputation alone, it is still important. But....

Striking animals, picks of the litter, needle in a haystack type specimens kind of throw rules out the window for me. They are so hard to come by, I have purchased whole collections just to get 1-2 animals I really wanted. Would I buy em without locality?? SURE! Would I buy em without lineage?? Most likely. My experience can key out to at least STATE locales 98% of the time, and thats good enough for me. Can I be fooled by someone misrepresenting or cross breeding? Yup. But that is balanced out by....

My resistence to most's definition of locality. See, I think locality is LOST beyond F3 because a decade of selective breeding WILL change any snake. I still collect from the field, and that term should be reserved for those who put in that hard work to keep their bloodlines "current". I'll compare it to a newspaper: I'm in Boston and I love the Boston GLOBE, but today's GLOBE is going to be much different than one of 10 years(3 generations)ago!

To me, all these things are interlaced. Would I let a pretty female go without love in the springtime because her date wasnt from X locale? NOPE. At what point would I not? Well I think ssp. designations are too much to begin with, if a naturally occuring intergrade exists why should WE choose against them? Honest representation is everything, be it locality or hybrids. But I always try and think of where the offspring will go before I breed, I think this is the most responsible way to breed. On this I think we can all agree!

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