Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Anyone ever heard of this locale of Grey bands? its apparentely a road in Texas. this pair is so dark in color that you cant make out the orange at all...almost a "blackout". I want some more info on the market for these guys. I was told by a very "in the know" breeder that they are prized becuase of the dark color and that "locale" Grey bands pairs are easily sold becuase the buyer knows exactly where they come from and wheat type of offspring they will produce...please...any info is good info

There are breeders that have palmdale dirt alterna, however, I do not see them for sale much.

the dirt produced the whole array of blair/alterna form......the 9 mile sheep sign was the place for alterna morphs........up to that sign any color/pattern was possible........john hollister collectede bthe bfirst "recorded"...alterna morph on the rr bed accross from bill's esso......we counted it as a "DURT" snake????

Pandale Dirt locality animals are collected from, or are produced from snakes collected from Pandale Dirt road in Texas. I heard that the Pandale Dirt road was a tire shredding and kidney crunching rocky dirt road that not many braved to collect alterna from back in the road cut collection days. Just not the most accessible or easiest area to hunt. This alone makes the local rarer in collections. I actually had a pair of Pandale Dirts about eight or so years ago. The male was so-so in coloration, and not super dark. The female was a gorgeous charcoal grey blairs with bright orange bands. Wheter or not this rarity makes them more valuable is stictly a supply and demand issue. I have NEVER seen Pandale Dirts advertised that I can remember, and have only seen Pandale Road (paved road) locality offered many years ago. The tricky part is having documentation that assures they are real-deal dirts. Remember, any one can call an alterna anything. Proving the locality is the hard part. I would say if you can verify the locality, a pair could be higher dollar in the alterna community.

They are still around and are not rare. Some people just choose not to work with them. Because of a lack in interest I haven't bred mine in years.
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Steve W.

'CAUSE.....DERE DURRRTY SNAKES.....

I collected a Pair off Pandale paved(11.1 miles North Highway 90) back on June 30th 1996. The female was collected at approximately 11:00pm and then we drove about 5 miles down the road, turned around, drove back and caught a nice male in the exact same spot the female was captured at. That evening there were so many mice running across the road that we ran a few over and feed them to both Graybands. They were great snakes and bred a few time for me(normally laying 8 eggs each year). Eventually, I got out of Graybands only holding on to one female baby they produced. She finally passed away this past spring. All the babies were very nice light blairs. This female was the garbage can of my snake collection for a long time. She was almost 50” long. You don’t see Pandale locales listed very often. I think they maybe common but look very normal as far as Blairs go.
Fun snakes to work with!