>>Come on man, you can't be serious about that being a pure bairdi. >>Anyone can see it's a lindheimeri hybrid, especially the head is >>pretty obvious.
When John Malone caught it and showed it to me, I was expecting it to be a TX Rat. When I looked in the bag, however, I was shocked. To be honest, John showed it to Travis and I and we all said, wow, what a weird Texas Rat, must by a hybrid. It was too big and heavy to be a bairdii.
I "borrowed" it from him for a few days to photograph at home (took that pic in my living room in a rubbermaid trash can lid with some dry leaves from the yard and a log from out back). While I was photographing it I still thought it might be a hybrid, although to be honest, I saw it more as a TX Rat with some bairdi blood rather than the other way around. It had a TX Rat demeanor, but so do other big old bairdi I have found.
The snake then ended up at the Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collection at Texas A&M where Jim Dixon ID'd it as a bairdi and recorded it in his snake book a couple of years later (Wehrler and Dixon, 2000) as the largest specimen ever taken.
It came from an area at the easternmost edge of the range where both species occur in sympatry and may occasionally interbreed. I have found good Texas rats in the same area in the canyon bottoms. Bairdi apparently are on the slopes and ridge tops in these areas.
The more I look at the photo over the years, the more bairdii like it looks to me as well.
Anyway, I don't really know how and why it was pronounced a full bairdi. John Malone was a very thorough herp researcher (although he was more of a frog guy), and I suspect the decision wasn't made arbitrarily.
So if the experts who looked at it (I'm not one) pronounce it a bairdii, I can accept that. And they did that based on the snake itself, not just my photo.
Here's a headshot for a better look. I wish I had taken more pics of the beast, but it wasn't particularly cooperative.
-----
Chris Harrison
