I think you are probably right in that my snake is just an odd one that popped out. Here is a bit of info on the parents of the litter she came out of. Max, the female, was a rescue that I got 5 years ago. She was in good shape when I got her, no scars, mites etc., but she was mean as hell. I used the t shirt trick and she turned out to be one of my best boas as far as temperment goes. She was a very heavily patterned CBLT and very dark, I suspected she was CA, but had no concrete proof. The male was her exact opposite. He has extremely thin saddles that are completely unconnected and he is very light and had lots of nice pinks. He has started to have a bit of a color change over the past year or two, and has seemed to get a bit darker especially in the tail and has lost most of his pink. The litter they produced was bit over 50/50 with CBLT's just ahead of regularly patterned babies. At the time I was under the impression that CBLT was co-dom or dominant, so that was what I expected. Last year Max was bred by the same male, but could possibly have also been bred by another CBLT I have. From this litter I got no CBLT's which really made me wonder what had happened and if the CBLT was genetic or not. Sadly, I lost Max this year after her second litter. I took her for a necropsy, and when she was opened up, it was apparent that her previous owner had seriously power fed her. She had so much internal fat that it completely encased her functioning lung, a lot of her organs and her uterus. The guy who did the necropsy was amazed I was able to even get a litter out of her. Most of her organs were also much larger than they should have been, he compared her liver size to that of a 14' burm, and she was only 6.5'. He felt that whoever had her first had really fed her heavily to ge ther to size and had then eased back on feeding which possibly stunted her growth, she never grew lenghtwise while I had her and she was healthy weight wise but far from obese. I was amazed at the amount of fat in her considering she never looked overweight compared to truly fat boas I've seen.

As the one I posted the pic of has gottne bigger, I have noticed she has gotten lighter. Her head pattern is also fairly heavy and looks very similar to the one you posted. She has a lot of speckles also. I took her to the All Ohio Reptile show just for display, and had a few different vendors offer me $300-500 for her. Everyone who has seen her in person always loves her look, too bad it is most likely just an abberation! What would be your reccomendations as far as breeding her to see if she could possibly be the odd genetic Arabesque? Most likely I will use my F1 hypo with her next year if she gets to 6', I figure that way it is a win/win no matter what.

If you have time and would like to see more pics from the litter she came from, I have pics of all of the babies posted on Webshots, under sboaman68. There is also a pic of me holding Max, but it doesn't really show her pattern all that well.

Thanks for the info, I really do appreciate it,
Rick S.

[ Hide Replies ]

• Updated Photo of Hypo Arabesque - Jeremy Stone, Sun May 23 12:40:47 2004
• Sweet looking hypobesque. I want him BAD!.np - Randall_Turner, Sun May 23 15:28:39 2004
• Jeremy, wondering if you could give some info... - rick s., Sun May 23 16:39:22 2004
• RE: Jeremy, wondering if you could give some info... - Randall_Turner, Sun May 23 17:55:18 2004
• Here are a few pix of "Lucky" my cblt. - Randall_Turner, Sun May 23 23:19:59 2004
• RE: Circle back Boas.... - Jeremy Stone, Sun May 23 21:23:39 2004
• Thanks Jeremy... more - rick s., Sun May 23 22:51:37 2004
• RE: Updated Photo of Hypo Arabesque - gmherps, Sun May 23 18:30:04 2004
• RE: Updated Photo of Hypo Arabesque - chris1gillam, Mon May 24 03:23:02 2004
• Simply awesome! - lexxxx300, Mon May 24 12:20:43 2004