To recap: In 2000, Buzz Ross and Mileniusz Spanowicz entered into an arrangement where Buzz would provide Spanowicz a large breeding group of Limpia Canyon alterna and Spanowicz would breed them with his own wc Limpia alterna. All these Limpia alterna were kept in a large communal cage. Two clutches were produced and the alterna were split between Buzz and Spanowicz. Jason Penney took a photo of one or both of these clutches and Spanowicz won CB Alterna of the Month for Nov 2000 (check the archives). Russ Cormack obtained two siblings from this line which later turned black and red from Buzz Ross. Andrew Godambe obtained a female which later turned black and red directly from Spanowicz. According to Spanowicz, Andrew’s female was from the same clutch that produced Russ’s alterna. Russ attempted to breed these alterna, but could not produce viable eggs. I collected a male from Limpia Canyon in 2006 and Russ loaned me his female. She produced her first viable clutch for me in 2008, with 100% fertility. Later that year, I shopped photos of the clutch and mother around to a few individuals because 40% of the clutch had questionable morphological traits. I received opinions, which I happened to share, but they were only opinions – there were no facts at that time – I only knew that Russ got the alterna from Buzz Ross and Buzz swore they were Limpias, so I asked Russ to post pics of the parents and the clutch on the forum to obtain more information. After the post went up, we found out that Andrew had a similar looking female, and he identified the breeder: Mileniusz Spanowicz. During the fact gathering posts, I connected with Spanowicz and received his version of what happened, and enlisted Troy Hibbitts to decide whether there were any biological inconsistencies. In addition, we found out that a black and red male X-MAS alterna collected by Spanowicz known as the North County Rd alterna and currently in the collection of another breeder, was in the collection of Spanowicz during the time of Ross/Spanowicz collaboration.
I was hoping that the person who discovered the truth about what actually happened would post it to provide a final chapter, but apparently he thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie – after all, the lineage was virtually busted through the forum discussion that took place. Anyway, here’s the final chapter: apparently, Spanowicz used his North County Rd. X-MAS male for male-to-male combat and left his X-MAS male in OVERNIGHT with all the other Limpia alterna. The results leave little doubt that one or both of the 2000 "Limpia" clutches were fathered by the North County Rd X-MAS male.
Robert
