LMAO!!!,..Holy smokes man!, I can sure relate to all that stuff brother... As you and a few others already know, I still to this day almost want to put a 9 mm to my head for selling those awesome real-deal oligozona(but of course not known to me at the time) to a pet shop and to a dude that later sold his pair to some unknown person at a show, before I really knew what they actually were too!..LOL!. At that time I basically thought they were probably real bad examples of stuarti (which I bought them as in the early 90's), or very likely stuarti intergrades..LOL!..



And of course you also know all about my getting some of Jim Mabe's poly x abnorma crosses too and originally thinking they were pure poly's..LOL!. We have all lived and learned from so many countless experiences in this hobby, and like you just said, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world either.



What's REALLY funny about this is that as I walked around the show after I bought the pair from Jim, I saw others on tables labeled as polyzona that were very tipped-up and "ugly"...and thinking mine were WAY better looking than their stuff, and even some of the breeders were looking at mine and then their animals, then would look at each other with a bewildered look wondering which one's were really the genuine polyzona..LOL! But looking back at all that now, the uglier more bi-colored ones on those tables WERE the real genuine polyzona..HAHAAHAHA!!..



Yeah, as the old saying goes...."live and learn"..LOL!



All great experiences that have gradually built the foundation of what I know now about them today,....so it was all actually PRICELESS!..



Ahhh yes, thinking back on many of the milestones of the ol' meristics and identification "learning curve" are something that you just can't beat at any price man!



Another thing that is so darn ironic and confusing to people is all the freakin HORRIBLE mis-labeled examples of the subspecies there are in so many milksnake books out there in the market. I do not have a SINGLE milksnake book that doesn't have numerous gross errors in it..LOL!. No wonder everyone is so confused in thinking they know what is what when these books will show a textbook stuart captioned as a freakin micropholis(RIGHT SCOTT??)..LOL!, a conanti as a Black milk, a stuarti as an oligozona, a polyzona as an abnorma...and on and on and on..........



This is why Rich Zuchowsy got out of Latin milks about as fast as he started, because he wanted to sell real-deal examples of these Latin milks but simply could not get a handle on them at ALL!, so off he went into solely corns..LOL!



Man, I really enjoyed this thread!





~Doug








-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"



my website -Serpentine Specialties

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