In 1990 a young boy and his mother walked into a pet store in Kentucky where Will Bird was working carrying a can with a snake in it. They wanted to swop the snake for a turtle as the son wasn't allowed to keep snakes. Will was explaining to them that they don't do trades when he caught sight of the snake for the first time. Stopping in mid sentence, he obliged there request and they left happy with a turtle and full setup. The snake was only young but it was solid white with black pupils and blue irises.



The snake belonged to the Pet Store but Will took a special interest in that snake and says as it grew it developed two black stipes the length of it's back which have continued to get darker throughout it's life. As the snake matured, he began to look for a female from the same locality as this one was found, but without any luck. He decided rather than to waste a breeding season to mate him to a female Amelanistic Black Ratsnake. This breeding produced six eggs which all hatched.



Will left the Pet Store shortly after they hatched to work at Louisville Zoo. Two years later he received a call saying that only two of the babies remained from that litter, he immediately set off for the Pet Store armed with every litter of Carpet Pythons that he had bred that year to strike a deal for them. The trade was made and the pair of snakes went home with Will. The following spring the female laid six perfect eggs. From these six eggs only one normal hatchling emerged, one amelanistic and two were solid white with black eyes and blue irises. The remaining two were solid white with pink eyes.



Will Bird returned to the Pet Store after the first clutch was produced and managed to persuade the owner to part with the Original Lemon Cow Sucker for a seasons worth of Carpet Pythons. He then obtained a female Black Ratsnake from the same road as the 'morph' was found on, to keep this morph locality specific. The first locality hets were produced in 2004 and homozygous in 2006.
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Ratsnakezone

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