I don't know where you are getting your information from, Doug...

I suppose it is all relative, but there aren't any pure Black Rats Snakes "just to the west" of Conway, SC. In that area you don't see pure Black Rat Snakes until you get into the Piedmont, which is about 80 miles inland from Conway. I've found Rat Snakes along the Fall Line (where the Piedmont meets the Coastal Plain) from the Georgia/SC border all the way up to the NC Sandhills, and though you can get some real black ones in that zone, most still show some Yellow Rat influence. It isn't until you get a lot closer to the NC/Virginia border that pure Black Rat Snakes begin to occupy the Coastal Plain.

Some Yellow Rat Snakes are yellow, some are bright orange, some are olive green, some are gray, some have blotches, most have stripes. They can have any combination of these traits. A yellow rat snake being "ugly" (as many northern, and even some southern populations tend to be) does not make it an intergrade.

This is a rat snake I found a couple years ago DOR:



What would you call this?

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