I was catching up with our friend Mr. Ronne a few weeks back, and had promised him then that I would post a Roswell update as soon as I could – and so finally, here it is!
We have the first three Roswell boas that were produced (by Heather Martin). Any rumors of their deaths have been highly exaggerated; in fact, completely fabricated.
We have continued to call the homozygous or “super” form Roswell, consistent with the way Heather named them. Rather than “het-Roswell” for the heterozygous form, we have taken to calling them Roswell-Laddertails, conveniently abbreviated with the acronym “RLT” which we think has a nicer ring to it than het-Roswell.
We have had the 2008 female Roswell the longest of the three. She is now a very solid 15 lbs and primed for this coming breeding season. The 2008 male is around 4½ feet now. The original 2007 male we acquired only about a year ago, and the folks who owned him had grown him very conservatively, so although he was in excellent condition he was considerably smaller than the 2008 male. We have since beefed him up a bit and he is now around the 4 foot mark. Both males were active breeders this past season, though we didn’t end up with a litter from either one (more on that below).
All three continue to be very strong, solid boas. No head tremors, no weird body postures, no feeding/digestive/shedding issues, no strange behaviors, perfectly ordinary tongue-flicking, they aren’t “grippy” like motleys always wanting to hold onto something – all in all, they feel, behave and move just like regular boas. Though there is still work to be done, all of the evidence is very encouraging and promising that the Roswells will finally provide us with a co-dominant (one can just as easily argue incomplete dominance – take your pick) morph of which the homozygous (or “super”) form is a solid, healthy boa.
I have not yet even come close to capturing all that makes up the appearance of a Roswell boa in a single photo. Even the bits and pieces below I am not altogether satisfied with – though some of these photos come close, the Roswell boas still look better in person.
This is the 2008 male on one of his lighter days:
…and on one of his darker days:
These were taken earlier this week:
Their bellies are pale with black speckling:
With a sudden transition to medium grey on the underside of the head from neck to chin:
Front third of body, side-view close-up:
Rear quarter of body, side-view close-up:
Here he is back in January doing some quality work on a big striped DH sunglow – we observed many weeks of good courtship activity, but unfortunately this girl never ovulated:
Here are a few shots of the 2008 female:
The camera tends to pick up her base color as tan, but there is actually a lot more yellow in her dorsal and sidewall coloring (very reminiscent of the coloring of the striped coin snakes [striped-phase Elaphe bimaculata – probably no longer in the Elaphe genus, but I don’t know what’s correct now…] I had 20 years ago), especially toward the tail as captured in this photo:
And here’s the 2007 male – note just the single cross-bar on his back:
This past season the 2007 male was working on this 3/8 Bcc het-albino from our Groovy Coral line. Again, lots of good courtship activity, and she got HUGE as you can see in this photo, but unfortunately came out of the breeding season with a respiratory infection that eventually required several weeks on Ceftazidime to cure. Her size here was either all pre-ov swell and she never ovulated, or she ovulated and reabsorbed – she never eliminated any slugs or other birth products, and ended up really skinny, much less than half this size following the treatments. She is coming around fine now, and fortunately the male never came down with whatever bug she caught.
Here are some group shots with the three of them together – a big pile of stripes! Note how much more yellow there is in the female’s background color in the next-to-last photo below.
Finally, here’s a bonus photo of one of our 2011 7/16-Bcc Groovy Coral Albino RLTs. Can you see where we’re going with that? 
I’ll be glad to address any questions you have. Thanks for your interest,
Steve Reiners
(Stated in a very high Voice ) Luv it ! 
