I finally made the trip down to see David Kornely this weekend. I've seen him at many snake shows over the years and we always talk about a visit, but I've just never made it happen. I feel pretty stupid, considering that he's just two hours away. Well, what a treat it was! His facility is jealousy-inspiring and his husbandry is impeccable. His animals were simply incredible and I saw things that I've never seen before.
Some of you may have seen my photos from my April trip to Texas where I also visited Jim Campbell and got to see his animals. Jim also has quite a collection of nice animals that I had never seen before, so you may expect that this trip would have been a been-there-seen-that kind of visit. But these guys both have things that not even the other one has in their collection.
The big difference here is that while Jim is quite an accomplished photographer and he's quite savvy on the computer, David may not even own a camera and he is not into the computer thing. I took a lot of quick photos at Jim's mainly for my own benefit of being able to look back on the pics. Jim has photos everywhere of his critters, but David does not. So my venture to David's included quite a bit of photos.
You'll hear this a lot from me, but this was a favorite. I typically go all goo goo for the pretty bright yellow ones and I have never appreciated the greens, but I changed my mind on this trip. A thin black line almost perfectly outlines every red saddle on this female.
David was very surprised that this was my favorite snake. The underlying color on this one is white. It is mottled in with the green and it makes the entire snake look like lichen. If you can zoom in on the pic, you can probably see it (if the quality of the pic isn't affected by the compression). I kept going back to this snake to check her out. She is very old and you can see the stuck skin on her, but she is gravid and continues to produce babies for him. She's not flashy, but she is very, very beautiful to me.
This was probably my second favorite schleg. Don't get me wrong, there were other snakes there that were more incredible and had that "holy crap!" factor, but these two snakes are the ones that after the shock wore off and I got used to what I was looking at, I could still stare at these snakes all day.
I have pics of his facility to share and many more pics of the schlegs and other Bothriechis, but I'll have to get them organized first. I took over 240 pics, lol. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
Derek
