Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I saw this pinesnake for sale at the Daytona expo. It was on the table of a vendor from FL and was in horrible shape. (much skinnier than it looks in the photo, spine was clearly showing).
It looked like an obviously sick, WC mugitus to me. The vendor was pretty nasty when I asked her about it. Mugitus are illegal to sell in the state of FL.
A friend of mine pointed it out to a F&W officer but he said it looks like a northern. What do you guys think? Anyone see it in person?
Chris

Chris,
I saw it. It did look like a northern to me. I agree, it was pretty sad looking.

From the picture it looks very similar to the naturally occurring melanoleucus x mugitus intergrades that we get in SC in the Allendale - Aiken area and somewhat up the Savannah Basin.

SteveB

Looks like a Northern to me. Could also be an intergrade as well.

Chris...........I saw another dealer from Florida who was selling a "patternless southern pine". I just had to ask him if he was aware that Florida law only exempts amels from sale here in Florida. He was of the opinion that since the origin of the animal could not be determined, it was OK to offer for sale. I think he is wrong. Patternless mugitus exist in the wild, especially in a couple areas of Florida. I think I'm going to ask the Florida Dept. of Natural Resources for the bottom line ruling on this one.

Just checked it.

I could definitely be wrong on the ID...I'm just not used to seeing northerns that are that rust colored toward the tail. Of course, most of the northerns I see are NJ locale and the southern variety and intergrades probably look pretty similar. To me, it looks pretty similar to the one in the link but mugitus can be pretty variable in appearance. When I told the vendor that it looked like a FL pine, she said "OK, I'll put FL pine on the label". When I told her it wasn't legal to sell FL pines in FL she got kind of nasty and said it was a northern.

I saw the patternless southern also but atleast that snake appeared to be in good health. I do believe that snake was also illegal to sell because only amelanistic specimens are exempt.
I wasn't really interested in acting as the reptile police....I just wanted to piss her off a little for selling a pine in such poor health.

By the way, I saw two vendors with LA pines...did either look legit to you guys?
Chris